Aftermath

Aftermaths

So, good news first.

Firstly, all classes were cancelled for the foreseeable future, and no one was allowed outside their dorms for a couple of days. That meant no more time wasted in classes I didn't like nor need.

Secondly, my plan worked… or at least the part about not being noticed by the teachers worked. While I wasn't completely sure about it, I was more than a little confident, due in no small part to the announcement given by Dumbledore, as he told us about the lockdown, on how the troll may be in one of the hidden passage or classes. While it wasn't outright stated by him, the context was easily understood.

They found no clue as to the whereabouts of the troll and they believed that it was still alive. That, combined with the fact that I wasn't pulled aside at any point during the lockdown, meant that I was safe from the teachers for now.

Lastly, and most crucially, I managed to get a total of 269 doses of 'troll liver' essence. Doses of course being the unit of measurement I based on how much essence I got from small animals, with one dose being five millilitres.

Which meant I had slightly over five cups worth of the essence, which was more than enough for there to be a significant changes to my liver if I was to consume it.

That is where the first of the bad news comes in.

See, since I had gotten more than enough essence, I had decided to test it before consumption. After all this was the first time I had gotten essence from an outright magical creature… which is how it ended up taking me three avada kedavra's to kill a single vole.

Now, I'll admit I had gotten really excited, thinking that I had apparently figured out how to survive the killing curse. Even if it was by accident, that would have been a great discovery. But after using five more doses and a couple more dead test subjects I realised what was actually happening. The essence was increasing the life force, or whatever it's called, of the animals.

What that essentially meant was that it made them inexplicably harder to kill, and since I wasn't that good with the killing curse it took me multiple tries to kill them, which meant in actuality it was useless against a killing curse from someone even remotely skilled in the spell.

That not to say that it was useless or anything, in fact it was extremely useful. It's just that I had no clue why it was happening and so I'll have to look out for similar things in any future essences I make from magical creatures. There's also the fact that, while this time the unintended effect was good, there was no guarantee that the next time I create an essence from a magical creature it would also have a good side-effect.

But those two things weren't really that bad, no, what stung the most about the side-effect was that that it really wasn't worth the extreme hassle I had to go through for the extra experiments.

Which brings me to the second piece bad news. The twins who, over the past week, made all my… 'illicit' activities near impossible to carry out.

The second the 'lockdown' had ended they had been constantly, and not so subtly, nudging me to tell them how I'd been able to get rid of the troll. Any time I was eating, reading in the public or even just walking down a random hall, they'd ambush me. Sometimes they wouldn't even do that, instead just lingering in my field of vision and haunting me like demented ginger ghosts.

It was frustrating to say the least and it also meant that I had to be extremely careful when going about and doing legally dubious things, like capturing animals for experimentation, just in case they randomly appeared…

… and then they started following me around in secret, which was the last straw. I was dealing with them now, rather than later, before they found something I didn't need them finding.

The only problem was that I hadn't come anywhere close to mastering the obliviate charm and the forgetfulness potion could apparently be reversed. I could just erase all their memories and that should technically work and be irreversible… but a snapped wand is also an irreversible thing and the elder wand can fix that, so I don't want to bet on the chances that it can reverse a full mind wipe.

Which meant that I'll have to use the good old methods. Gaslighting and misdirection.

Thankfully that line of thinking also brought me to a startling realisation. They're only fourteen-ish years old, are pretty loyal to their family or friends, and on top of that they don't want their map confiscated.

So what I have to do is make them believe that keeping my secrets is good for their family or that their map will get confiscated if they tell the teacher or, ideally, both at the same time. Unironically easy.

In fact, I already have an idea on how to spin it so they think that…