Harry Potter : Chapter 38: Turning Point III

"He tends to pour into writing everything that passes through his mind, and while he discards much of it, or works through iteration of every theory until he manages to find something unassailable.

Many of his most outrageous ideas are interesting, even if disjointed and based on vague intuitions more than anything concrete."

...

Minerva rose from her seat after setting the recipe for Winter Morning over the chessboard, their game utterly forgotten while she approached the absolute mess that reigned supreme over the tables of Rubeus, her eyes darting from one piece of parchment to the next.

"I tend to ignore most of the ramblings that he thankfully doesn't feel the need to share verbally."

Riddle commented idly as he followed the witch, the glass of Winter Morning still held in his left, "Things like producing a magical potion out of mundane ingredients, however, means that even in his chaos he might be into something."

"I still haven't had the time to sit down with him and talk about in those notes he leaves only stuff he's certain about," Minerva shooke her head minutely, barely refraining from starting to set in a semblance of order the mess over the desks.

"nevermind looking through this madness."

"If intuition managed to guide him to do something as absurd as this... Winter Morning," Riddle hesitated before pronouncing the overdramatic name Rubeus had assigned to that brew.

"He might be onto something with his choice of Divination."

"I thought he simply wanted a subject he could fail with little consequence, focusing his time on his admittedly ever-increasing list of projects."

The Griffindor witch murmured distractedly as her eyes scanned a few word on each page, ignoring the occasional, rough drawings that somewhat broke the monotony of the messy scrawl that so easily matched the incongruous style of the other Slytherin wizard.

"Yes, I was there when you scolded him." he reminded her, bringing a slight flush to her cheeks.

"However, before today's discovery, the ideas he left unorganized on flying sheets of paper his ideas tended to be merely inspiring or amusing, if nothing else... even if they might as well be a headache Transfigured into ink on a page."

McGonagall snorted in agreement: "To say nothing about his penmanship."

Her fellow Prefect nodded a bit in her direction: "Indeed... so, now that we see that he managed something utterly impossible, aren't you curious to see the other things our scatter-brained friend is working on?"

The eyes of both of them turned on the main table that Rubeus had claimed for himself, and Minerva's lips thinned in distaste when she saw the piles of tomes about Divination that were scattered there.

"I have no interest about that particular subject, as you well know, given that we both took Runes and Arithmancy."

"I was more curious to see if he was able to gain a glimpse of what he was going to be studying before doing so."

"What?" Minerva's eyes returned to her fellow Prefect with a confused frown, "While it isn't up to me to criticize an entire syllabus, I didn't think you put any stock into that..."

"Hogwash?" Riddle smirked knowingly, "I disliked the implication that there is a future already written somewhere, very much like you, I despise the idea of not being able to steer my own life... but this is different, isn't it? Hagrid chooses topics that have hardly anything to do one with another, yet outside of classes he casts almost exclusively silently, and..."

"And?"

"You are aware that we brewed a small batch of Felix Felicis under the guide of Professor Slughorn during the previous year, yes?" Tom's eyes found hers briefly before he returned to skim over a section of the table entirely covered by a bunch of rolled-up parchments, and at her nod, he kept talking.

"He almost didn't need the professor's instructions."

Minerva openly gabìped for a fraction of a second before her mouth was snapped shut in irritation, her head turning so that her sight could encompass the glass cabinet holding the multitude of recreative brews Rubeus had left available.

"Well, he is supremely talented in Potions..."

"Potions are a mixture that releases a magical effect when applied to a wizard or witch." Riddle shook his head.

"And those we prepare in class tend to be more or less simple, even with no understanding of the process on the part of the brewer, the recipes are designed to work."

"The Felix Felicis isn't?"

Riddle almost snorted at that, shaking his head in what was almost a condescending manner towards the witch.

"The Liquid Luck is a distillate of a concept, very much like Veritaserum, and the difference from any potion that you might have readied in Hogwarts, for those the brewer must be aware of every single step, understand every action behind the preparation of each ingredient, not to mention the sheer amount of focus needed during the process."

Minerva frowned, a part of her regretting not having the same absurd affinity of Rubeus for Potions, but she didn't know what her fellow Prefect was hinting at.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're trying to say."

"I'm saying, that at some point he added a sprinkle of dew while keeping his eyes closed, and he knew without seeing that exactly seven drops had fallen into the potion." he gave her an example of what he had witnessed.

"I'm saying, that he treated the rare opportunity of brewing Liquid Luck like he couldn't miss a step, like every almost devastating mistake was part of the recipe, and not only the preparation of ingredients and their stirring. To be frank, I thought he was drunk on more than one occasion."

Minerva blinked in surprise: "But since Professor Slughorn didn't intervene I guess he was simply..." she gestured helplessly, unable to say out loud that her Slytherin friend with less than two years of education had been able to do stuff that a Professor wasn't aware of.

An open snort was the immediate answer of Riddle, whose hand darted between a pile of sheet of parchments in order to fish out a single one.

"Slughorn was never in the position of stopping him, and the way the potion reacted shut his mouth before he could comment. In any case, he was baffled."

Before the Griffindor witch could answer to that particular tidbit of information, the piece of parchment was almost thrust under her nose, and she grabbed it with a disdainful sniff, her eyes reading the words written in the dark blue ink that Rubeus sometimes favored.

"Humans aren't made to do magic, since they need a focus for their best feats."

What? She took a couple of seconds to make sure she had actually read what was written on the parchment, before she sniffed again in distaste, reading quietly to be quicker about it.

The focusing tool is either too specialized - crystal ball - or allows for a deal of generalization that wouldn't be possible otherwise, in the case of a wand. A frown appeared on her visage while she leaned against the nearest table, her focus unwavering.

"I found that parchment a week ago, and I thought it was one of the many things he sprouted with no reason, but with Winter Morning..." the voice of Riddle didn't manage to distract the witch, who mouthed quietly the next words on the page.

"In any case, those magical foci are derived by, crafted out of, or outright born from a magical being." that was true enough, but to go from there to clearly state that humans weren't made for magic? How absurd. 

Wands (wand-wood, a magical creature's part as a core), enchanted items (magic applied to broom and carpets allows them to fly), the origin of Owls used for delivering letters is well documented (Greece - Is Athena's symbol tied to it?).

"Yet, wizards and witches alike are capable of small feats of magic that do not require a focus, accidental magic in children, that ranges from changing the color of something to limited telekinesis, apparition, and oneiromancy." Riddle recited from memory the words that Minerva was going over.

Showing just what kind of terrifying memory he was gifted with, or just the type of dedication he put in looking over even the ramblings of Rubeus he deemed meaningless.

"Some magic can be performed once and have life-long lasting effects, such as the Animagus transformation, which is somewhat a ritualistic application of a potion." Minerva read out loud the continuation of the disconnected theories on the parchment.

"Besides the potion itself, which following Slughorn very first lessons builds a 'story' the circumstances in which the brew is used make the drinker, and perhaps the brewer, part of another 'story'."

The Griffindor witch stopped reading to turn her eyes on her fellow Prefect: "Is this why you went from the recipe of Winter Morning to this headache transfigured in ink that you insist on calling 'notes'?"

Tom nodded sardonically, finishing his drink with a last gulp: "Some pieces of magic humans can accomplish without the need for a magical focus of any kind besides their own body." Riddle spoke with a smile that completely hid what he was actually thinking about the situation.

"Mind Arts," Minerva read out loud, "which might just be mental discipline, Parseltongue, which is speculated to be blood-based, Metamorphomagi, which again might be something blood-based."

"Here." Riddle's finger pointed at the end o the page, ignoring a bunch of crossed-out paragraphs that speculated about Animagus transformations.

Almost where the paper was ripped from a much longer roll of parchment, scribbled furiously was written: 'The ability to do magic comes from the wizard, since a muggle can do nothing with a wand, but a human needs a 'magical focus' to direct what he wishes into reality (above parlor tricks)

He needs also a symbolism in his mind that can act as a bridge between his will and the concept he tries to use. A ritual acts as both.'

Minerva blinked owlishly at the rather abrupt and seemingly random ending: "Why does he seem so certain of this? The only thing even remotely 'ritualistic' he knows about is the care for some of the ingredients of the Animagus Potion."

"I suspect that he's certain about this because of his success with Winter Morning." Riddle spoke quietly.

"But even someone as reckless as our scatter-brained friend doesn't base all his efforts on the results of a single experiment, however successful.

So the real question that came to me was: does he only know about the ritualism for your Animagus Potion, or did he figure out something else, and if so, how?"

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