68 Harry Potter : Chapter 67: The Rule of the Hunt III

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.

...

Her shoulders went a bit lax while her knees bent minutely, and her hand twitched minutely, as if she was barely able to contain the nervous energy that coursed through her.

Riddle stood straighter while my version of a Pepper Up gave him a jolt, and his eyes were hungry as he understood what Minerva had been building with the Transfiguration Professor: it took him maybe a minute, and once he was done, he retreated from the witch's mind.

She didn't give any reaction to that, and it was comprehensible, as Riddle wasn't meant to attack her, only to understand. His fear for his life was the best assurance I could have asked for that he wouldn't be where he didn't need to.

When it came my turn, I remained impassible, my mind in that odd balanced point between abstract meaning and its counterpart in reality.

Every element of the ritual, from the stab wounds on our left hands to the way I had placed the Hydra's heads, was kept at the same time at the forefront of my consciousness. And Riddle saw it: and I felt him.

There was no meeting of minds, focused as I was on the Ritual, I simply felt something that did not belong observing, evaluating, and reaching the understanding that I so readily offered.

We wouldn't need to think exactly the same thing in the same way, as the bulk of the work when it came to directing the ritual would be done by the brew in the stone bowl, but our intent had to be in synch, and the words that we'd speak out loud had to be said at the same time.

Maybe half a minute after his mind had retreated, my eyes met his, and I was the one to observe the meaning of my ritual through the lenses of an animal's primal understanding of the hunt: convoluted as it was, it added something deep that I could feel with the entirety of my being, something undefinable, something that only Minerva could have added to the situation at hand.

I spotted Minerva's flinch when Riddle did what he had to to make her grasp the combined comprehension born from my understanding and her Animagus' instinct, but it didn't matter, we were ready.

The rest of the world seemed to fall away and disappear as we were left in a triangle, each of us with three Hydra's heads at our feet, surrounding a stone bowl with a lit fire underneath. Above it, spinning lazily maybe a handspan over the liquid, was the hydra's heart.

Guided by our now shared understanding of the ritual, empowered by the truly primal mindset of the Animagus among us, we spoke as one:

"Heads of the won, at the feet of the winners."

On the stage set by the grey potion simmering in the basin, it was as if the Hydra had just opened its eyes: present and uncontested as it still had to meet with the hunted turned into hunters, it made the liquid spin lazily, as if a dark shape moved just beneath the surface of the liquid.

As an answer to the words spoke, the fire leaped from under the stone bowl to the Hydra's heads sitting in a triangle at our feet, and it immediately assumed a white coloring while the macabre trophies burned without smoke or smell.

Lit by the heatless flames at our feet that described changing shadows across our features, we continued without hesitation. We used our wands to cut ourselves and levitate three drops of blood each into the brew:

"Blood of the victor, to conquer the loser."

The brew boiled violently as it recognized the beginning of the conflict it would be describing: inside of the potion, it was as if Minerva, Tom, and I had just entered the stage.

The hunt that the potion had been prepared to describe now had the two acting parts, and only needed the conclusion. Again as one, we pointed our wands at the heart that was still levitating above the stone bowl:

"Heart of the hunted, to be consumed by the hunter."

The potion's chaotic boiling point quieted immediately as it was delivered a conclusion: the story it held was perfectly stable. It had a beginning in the Hydra's heads that burned smokelessly at our feet, a development in our appearance marked by the addition of blood to the brew, and a conclusion in the heart that was being consumed by the concoction.

The heart fell into the brew, and in a flash of white, the heads that burned away into nothingness, along with the potion that disappeared, taking with it the fire that had been burning under it.

Even if 'disappeared' wasn't correct: I could feel it, searing for a single instant along my veins, and the creeping presence of the venom was conquered as the ritual took effect. It was done in an instant, every element that had been used for the ritual was consumed in a magic that had no immediate, visible effect.

Well, almost: Riddle let out a gasp as he fell forward, but his face was flushed, and there was a wild, unrestrained smile on his visage. His eyes were wide as he caught himself with his only working arm, his knuckles splitting on the ground as he refused to let go of the yew wand in his hand, but that he was aware of the results of the ritual was obvious.

Minerva ran to him immediately, her worried eyes roaming over his wounded for as she reassured herself of his health.

Still weak because of the blood loss, Riddle was little more than a doll in her hands as she started to nag him about everything under the sun, and I couldn't help laughing at the image.

That of course, was a mistake, as Minerva whirled on me with a crazed glint in her eyes: "And you, don't get me started with..."

I tuned her out as my eyes instead fell on what was left of the Hydra's carcass: there was still much that could be valuable or at least useful, and I couldn't help the flood of joy that coursed through me. This, I realized, this is what I want to do.

How could I not? With Tom and Minerva, we had bested a Hydra, and I successfully created a ritual that made use of all of our talents: this was what magic was meant to be, this is how a wizard was meant to live.

With a spark of inspiration, I raised my wand, channeling that unbridled joy that made me feel truly alive, in a manner that I hadn't felt since when my wand had chosen me at Ollivander's, and cast.

"Expecto Patronum!"

At the white starlight that blossomed from my wand, Minerva's voice quieted, and even the exhausted Tom looked flabbergasted at the surge of magic that took a defined shape amidst us, only for my eyebrows to climb as I observed the animal that observed me with eyes made of the purest light.

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