Lure for the rats

Hermione moved the shroud around her just like how Harry told her to do.

Creating a 'Shroud of Concealment', as Harry like to call it, had been the next exercise given to her by Harry.

She was rather excited when she finally got to learn something with the Will & Intent magic that was not related to telekinesis. Not that there was anything wrong with telekinesis. In fact, it was very helpful for doing daily chores and in duels but she had doing learning the same thing for the last few months and now she wanted to learn something else.

So Harry had asked her to create a Shroud of Concealment of her own.

And after a lot of hard work. she had finally managed to create something that pushed people's interest away from her. And Selena (who could practically see magic) had confirmed that yes, her shroud was indeed similar to Harry's if only a lot more primitive and weak.

Hermione had a feeling that Selena didn't like her for some reason and could only guess that the snake was jealous of the attention Harry gave her.

But regardless of how Selena treated her, she had always held the Horned snake in high regard since she was Harry's first friend and because Selena knew more about Harry then either she or Penelope did.

In the last few days however, she had come to understand that creating a shroud was one thing and controlling it was another.

Unlike Harry who was able to maintain the shield passively, she had to use actively use all of her concentration just to maintain it.

So it was understandable that moving it around herself would be even harder.

But she had never shied away from hard work. In fact she loved these kind of challenges and thrived upon them.

Her concentration was broken once again as all the students suddenly stood up and started leaving the class.

She lost control of the shroud and felt it fade away into non existence.

She sighed and started putting her books inside her bag as she wondered how much she had changed over the past few months.

At the beginning of the year, she would never think about not focusing on the teacher in a class, even if the teacher was someone like Binns.

But then Harry had come into her life and changed her would perspective.

She didn't really agree with all his methods and way of doing things and he didn't agree with her on many things either (first and foremost being her respect for the authority) but they had built a very good friendship regardless of their differences and that was something that she will always be grateful for.

In fact, they were such good friends now that she couldn't even think where she'll be without him.

She shook her head to bring her out of her thoughts because she knew that she would able to fondly of their friendship all day long if she let herself. But there were classes to attend so she stood up in order to leave before another person came in front of her and blocked her path.

"Hi. I'm Daphne. Daphne Greengrass." The girl said enthusiastically as she brought her hand forward in an offer of friendship.

And Hermione wondered what Harry would do in this situation.

He would probably say something along the lines of 'And I don't care' before leaving the poor girl behind. He can be cruel like that to people he didn't knew personally.

It was one of the things that she hated about him at first. But that was before she knew that he had an abused childhood. Now she simply accepted him for who he was and hoped that she'll able to change him for the better at some point in the future.

She shook her head inwardly and gave a small smile to the blonde girl and shook her hand before introducing herself "And I'm Hermione. Hermione Granger."

—————

Penelope knocked the door three times in quick succession and waited a moment before knocking four times just as quickly.

It was their would secret code, which seemed rather childish in Penelope's mind. Especially because Selena could usually sense the magic of a person from the other side of the room and tell their identity.

Regardless, no one ever accused Harry of being too mature and if she had to go through some stupid customs to meet her Runes teacher (yes, their roles have been reversed by now) then she would gladly play along with his wishes.

The door opened and she stepped inside only to stop in her tracks at the sight in front of her.

Over the last few months, she had come understand that Harry was a rather… eccentric person and had learned to expect the most unusual things from him and his projects.

That was the only reason why she did not gaped at what he doing in the room right now.

The whole room had been emptied by Harry (which was not an unusual thing) and in it's place were ten long transparent tunnels.

A cage was added to on end of each of these tunnels and a plate was kept at another end of those tunnels.

And all those tunnels were occupied with a rat each as they moved forward in order to eat the food kept in the plate.

Penelope wondered if this was some kind of race that he was hosting for his own entertainment.

With Harry, you could never really tell where the entertainment ended and where the projects started.

Just like how she had thought that he bought a Nimbus 2000 for himself because he enjoyed flying but that changed when the very next day, he dismantled the broom in order to study it so that add the enchantments to the magical robe he was working on.

So instead of putting too much thought in it, she simply sat beside Harry, who was noting down the results of the rat race in a notepad and asked.

"Harry. What are you doing?"

He remained silent for a while and kept writing in the notepad before he flicked his hand and all ten rats flew back to their own respective cages.

"I'm trying to find the best kind of lure for these rats." He replied with a frown as if she had just asked a stupid question.

She held the urge to bonk him in his head and gave a sweet smile in return "And why are you trying to find the best lure for rats. You're not trying to create an army of them in Hogwarts."

He gave her a dirty look which explained what he thought of her words before his eyes suddenly widened and he started to scratch his chin in thought with a far away look.

He was not really considering her idea of creating a rat army was he.

Though at this point, she wouldn't be surprised if he did.

"You know, that is not a bad idea." Then he shook his head "But no. I'm not trying to create a rat army here. This is just for research."

"Research?" she asked.

"Yes. I'm trying to learn human transfiguration." His words sent a chill down her spine and she grimaced at that thought but he continued as if he didn't see the change in her expression "But since human transfiguration is so dangerous, I will first try it on rats. But the transfiguration I'm going for is rather… dangerous so quite a few rats will die during research. And sending out Bitty every day in order to catch rats seems like such a waste of her time and talent. So instead I'm trying to create a lure that would attract rats from over a large distance so that I could capture a whole bunch of them in one go."

"Isn't that a great idea?" he asked happily while looking at her with a childish.

She on the other hand was feeling too nauseated to reply "I'm think I'm about to be sick." She replied and promptly emptied her food right then and there.

Author's Note:- Yes. Doctors, Scientists and Researchers usually find animals like rats, frogs, rabbits and monkeys to do their tests so that's what Harry will start doing from now on as well.

He might have jumped to human experiments at the start of his research but now that he's delving into dangerous waters, the chance that his test subjects will die had become higher.

And he knows that the human test subjects are rare so he'll be doing the tests on Rats from now on.

Hope you like the chapter.

And if you like my work and have a little cash to spare then please support me at- pat.reon.com/ankit1