Harry Potter : Chapter 37: Turning Point II

The dark eyes of Tom Riddle found hers while he sat, settling the pear-shaped glass flask beside the chessboard as he did so, only to return to studying the recipe in his hand.

"Why would you think I ignore it? There are a few empty classrooms here and there, and there had been Clubs that no longer needed the furniture."

...

The Griffindor witch closed her eyes, her wand twirling in her fingers as she focused, keeping her mouth shut in order to taunt the wizard in front of her. In the quiet of her mind, with the familiar thrum of warmth running up and down her arm, she pictured clearly what she wanted.

From the beginning of the process down to the most minute detail, and when she was ready, she drew a bell-shaped curve with the tip of her wand.

Out of thin air, a couple of glasses took shape: they weren't anything to write home about, since they were simple cylindrical forms just a bit thicker at the base.

"I have the feeling that the competition you two have going on wouldn't have allowed you to not question him about the furniture." she resumed the previous chat with a smile while she placed the two glasses next to Rubeus' brew and settled the pieces on the board.

"Even if I can't decide whether stealing the furniture would be a victory for him or one for you, since he would have been unable to get tables and whatnot properly in that case."

Eyeing the two silently conjured glasses with badly hidden hunger in his eyes, Tom started with the Queen's pawn, following up with a Knight when Minerva answered to the standard opening with one of her own.

"Why do you think the way in which he acquired the furniture would influence whether he won or not the current challenge?"

"So there are ongoing challenges." the Griffindor witch smiled widely, her razor-sharp focus going from the chess match to the conversation they were having without hitching.

"I suspected so when I saw you exchanging that black king from time to time... how does it work?"

Tom smiled mysteriously at her question, his eyes remaining focused on the parchment in his hand even as he waved his wand, the pear-shaped flask uncorking itself and pouring a generous dose of its contents in the two glasses.

More than the looks of the room, however, the Gryffindor witch felt like the two younger wizards that had worked with her to make the Rùnda possible were subtly competing one with another to add the most outrageous things to the room, trying to show up the other with this or that detail that made the secret corridor the three of them had coopted at the 4th floor into something... more.

"The first time we talked," the Slytherin wizard decided to reply while he started preparing an obvious attack with his bishop.

"he dragged me in a timed game of chess, mostly to see if I would be able to enchant a couple of hourglasses... I think he expected to be able to discern the method by simply seeing it once."

Minerva chuckled as an answer, her fingers curling over one of the glasses while she considered her next move: "Timed matches... that's an abomination of the game if I ever heard one."

"He was surprised when the pieces moved on their own." Tom smirked, "Even more so when the hourglasses I had transfigured actually did what I set them out to with no further input on my part."

"So who wins the last of your little games gets the Black King?" the witch asked, the image of them exchanging that piece clear in her mind while she studied the brew she was about to sip: even with no further spells from any of the two mages, condensation was already appearing on the outside of the glass, revealing just how cold the drink was.

"It's symbolic, of course." Riddle replied while he split his focus between the chess match and the recipe of the curious brew he was considering to drink.

The liquid was strangely translucent, not quite white, but almost exactly like the edge of a slump of snow seen with the sun on the other side, and not as heavy as one would have thought it to be: in fact, if the Slytherin had to bet, he would say that it was lighter than water.

"So, in order to win 'Bragging Rights' one over the other, you keep trying out new things?" Minerva asked, finally taking a sip of her beverage.

The pleasurably fresh drink washed in her mouth with a tingle she couldn't put her finger on, but as she swallowed, she immediately felt more awake: the slight laziness that came from sitting in the sunlight shattering with no hope to return, and for a single instant, she felt like she was running over the frozen surface of a lake.

She opened eyes that she didn't notice had shuttered close and looked with newfound wonder at the beverage: "How did he call this?"

"Winter Morning." Tom replied casually, his eyes never leaving her form, "I take it is as... unique... as his other brews?"

"Shouldn't it?" the witch asked with a raised eyebrow while she disengaged from an exchange that would have cost her a bishop and two pawns to win a single one of Riddle's rooks.

"There isn't a single magical ingredient in this recipe." Tom handed over the parchment while he took a sip of his own, a frown appearing on his face immediately after he felt the effects of the beverage.

Minerva's eyes scanned the parchment with a speed that betrayed her disbelief: "You'd think he'd lie about it?"

"It is a very idiotic lie if it can be easily disproven." Tom replied, "Besides Hagrid not being the type, he's not as stupid as failing to foretell how we'd react were he to blatantly withhold information, or worse, obfuscate it... no I simply think that he can turn this recipe into his Winter Morning."

"I don't have his hand for potions," the Gryffindor witch frowned as she admitted something she didn't care to focus on most of the time, "but even when I follow to the letter the recipe for the other brews, the results aren't quite as refined as those he can produce."

"Have you spotted the only thing that makes Winter Morning different from the others?" Tom's voice made Minerva raise her eyes from the parchment, confusion and curiosity warring in her eyes.

"Spring Water, Daffodil Petals, Snowdrop, Rose thorns, fresh pine nettles, pieces of ice broken from the surface of a lake..." she listed quickly.

"I don't remember his recipes, besides some interest before I taste them..."

"All of that was mixed on a cold fire." Riddle answered his own question, "That is the only piece of magic present in that potion, besides some ritualism in the way he picked up his ingredients, but that is almost always present."

The witch nodded at the last comment, remembering the notes she had casually skimmed the previous year about the care one had to show the ingredients to bring out their maximum effect

"Besides the fact that any ritualism applied to how the ingredients are picked up bring up the same kind of magic of the potion that I used for the Animagus transformation, there isn't a single ingredient coming from anything resembling a magical plant or creature."

Minerva quickly put together the extreme oddity of the brew she had tasted, "But how can it have an effect like this if there is no magic in it?"

"You haven't read his messy mix of notes about the subject of Potions, I take it?" the sardonic question of Tom made her whip her head in his direction, the game of chess temporarily forgotten.

Minerva flushed slightly: "I don't have that kind of time, I'm Prefect, Captain of Gryffindor's Quidditch Team... I leaf through the notes he has already revisioned and bound in a book-like fashion on one of the shelves, I would have missed anything he left on one of his desks."

Tom smiled thinly with a single finger casually trailing over his own Prefect badge before he returned his attention to the conversation, "A pity," he commented.

"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."

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