Means to an End

Tom let his own little combination of spells to avoid detection fall apart once he witnessed Rubeus' first-year pet leave the Hogwarts' Library with a spring in his step and a barely contained smile.

The diminutive student had taken to his interactions to Minerva like a fish starved for water: which could even somehow be understandable, Riddle knew that he almost always felt the drearily dull interactions with everyone else like a heavy cover that he managed to lift either by playing everyone for a fool or in his always unpredictable and always intriguing interactions with Hagrid and McGonagall.

That didn't mean that he was just going to hand over his hard work to the first bright-eyed idiot that piqued Hagrid's interest, and frankly, Tom had better ways to spend his time than wasting it to observe this particular speck of dirt that even Minerva had pronounced 'absolutely brilliant'. then again, he had never truly believed that the witch would refuse someone the right to knowledge of any kind, not when they proved worthy of it somehow in her eyes. It was the same facet of her personality that had first allowed Rubeus to snuggle them both in her confidence.

The Slytherin Prefect walked into the Library with the usual polite charm painted on his face, not giving a hint of the sneer that he felt mount up every time he thought about allowing another into the Rùnda, and soon found Minerva huddled on a table that she had recently taken to share with her Gryffindor companions and mixed year mates for the occasional study-group.

But even if pushed by the looming N.E.W.T.s, the other students simply couldn't really be expected to keep up with a witch like her. Not when she had been studying beyond the scope of Hogwarts' curriculum alongside Rubeus and Riddle's brilliant self, not when she had received private lessons with Dumbledore... and slowly, the frustration that had barely been simmering, unknown, during her first years of schooling, was now blatant if one knew her enough.

And Tom was such a person.

"I thought that you wouldn't last an entire week of mediocrity." his smooth tones made Minerva's head snap in his direction even while her hand kept scribbling on a spare piece of parchment, the several tomes open before her shifting to accommodate for the next topic of study once the witch used her off hand to poke at them with her wand.

Riddle didn't wait for her to truly address his presence before opening his trusty, leather-bound journal and casually extracting the drawing of a comfortable armchair into reality, the liquid twisting of black ink briefly shimmering under the light of the winter sun that peaked through some of the clouds outside, and he kept talking: "That you managed it for so long... on one side, I feel like I should be impressed by your stubbornness, on the other, I really can't condone your lowering yourself to any common student."

"Don't insult your fellow students Tom," she narrowed her bottle-green eyes at him before tapping her Headgirl badge, "this is the only warning you'll receive today."

Does it meant that I can insult them tomorrow? Tom refrained from smiling when the image of Rubeus saying those exact words blossomed in his mind, and simple arched an eyebrow: "Are we already pretending that everyone is the same and equally capable? Rubeus and I never truly forced you to explicitly recognize it, but our accomplishments are proof enough, don't you think?" Is she truly thinking that she can go back to being extraordinary among the worthless without feeling meaningless herself? And is she really attempting to ascribe meaning to House Points, now, after all that we've witnessed and shared?

It was clear that in her haste to distance herself from Rubeus, after the ill-received news about Marie's situation, Minerva was trying to grasp to what should have been familiar. But from the barely contained snort of the witch, Tom could clearly see how laughable she found the idea of using House Points to discipline him, and how out of place she suddenly felt now that she unconsciously realized that her feet had truly gotten used to a very different set of shoes. She was a huntress of magic playing an old game, not too different from a grown woman finding that the dolls she used as a child held litle to no interest for her now after trying to play an old game.

The witch in question pursed her lips in a thin line as she straightened her back, unamused and apparently uninterested in what Tom had to say: "You call accomplishment even that abomination..."

"It was an abomination that saved my life, or I remember it wrong?" Riddle made use of all of his Occlumency to crush back the bone-deep, soul-gnawing fear that was summoned by a simple, oblique reference to their Hydra-ritual, his fingers idly tracing the circular scar on the back of his hand, the charms to conceal it unable to stop him from feeling the slightly upraised skin.

Before the witch could reply, the Slytherin wizard let out the dismissive sneer that he felt she deserved: "Of course you're referring to the last impossible achievement of Rubeus."

"I'd hardly call it an achievement!"

"And yet you haven't gone running to Professor Dumbledore, spilling the beans." Riddle's face returned to his usual polite facade only for him to raise a challenging eyebrow: "But you have been avoiding the Rùnda, and even with your disdain, you really have done nothing to help. I can't help, but wonder why..."

Seeing as she wasn't going to get anything done until Riddle was done with what he wished to say, the Gryffindor witch mastered her own temper and waved her wand, closing the tomes and drying the ink of her notes. "What do you want, Tom?"

"To understand." the deceptively simple answer led the Slytherin Prefect to tilt his head sideways, "And more importantly, given what I've seen, to try and make you understand."

"I understand perfectly..."

For once not patient enough to play the long, twisting game of words until what he needed was the only option left fot the one he was talking with, Riddle huffed, annoyance clearly written on his face: "For all of your indignation now, you didn't spend a single thought about the condition of werewolves everywhere until you tangentially became involved, and only because Rubeus saw fit to ask for our assistance."

"How can you condone what he has done!?" the gree-eyed witch suddenly rose to her feet, the memory of what the two had witnessed together unspoken but clear in the air: "How can..."

"How can you not admire him?" Riddle's question managed to be delivered in the exact tone of earnest curiosity needed to cut the wind from her sails: "How can you not appreciate Rubeus' determination in seeing not only the results of his studies, but results that carry an undeniable, tangible, positive wight in the world?" he left his words hang in the air for a few seconds, waiting just long enough for Minerva to begin to choose some words before continuing: "Oh, yes, hypocrisy... I can honestly say that wouldn't have expected it from you."

"Hypocrisy!" the fir and dragon heartstring wand in her hand sent a glimmer of angry sparks over the aged desk of the Library, "how dare..."

"Do you have ways to ignore how extraordinary Marie's situation is?" honest perplexity replaced the aggressive overtones that his posture had held until that moment, "I'd like to hear those..."

"The magic he used, Tom..." Minerva shook her head with irritation clear on her face once she realized taht she couldn't truly bring herself to piss on the impossible that Rubeus had managed to achieve once again: "He reanimated a deer's corpse for Merlin's sake!"

"And with it, he realized what may very well be the less destructive use of those kinds of magic ever recorded." Riddle crossed his legs and rested his clasped hands on one knee, not for a moment feeling threatened by Minerva's holding of her wand while she was admittedly enraged. Enraged for what? For the use of magics that others deemed 'evil', how petty.

"You condone..."

"It was a mean to an end, Minerva." Tom sighed, openly displaying disappointment now that he had gotten Minerva to admit that she wasn't really questioning the results, only the effects that the means used could have on her friends and herself. "He did what he could, with what he had."

"And the results speak for themselves!"

"Quite." the Slytherin wizard nodded readily, "But not, I think, in the way you mean it: before that dawn the last week, there has never been a single successful attempt to interfere in any concrete way with the werewolf transformation."

Minerva sighed as she slid her wand into her sleeve only to pinch the bridge of her nose while he closed her eyes in exasperation. After several seconds, she turned towards the wizard she had been speaking with, a stark, primal resolution clear in her eyes: "I gave Rubeus until the next full moon to solve the problem. Then I'll go to Professor Dumbledore with this."

Tom's gaze turned somewhat flat for a second, gone too fast for Minerva to truly register it, but her wand was ready in her hand, a nervous twitch of her wrist enough to slide it in her fingers.

"Why would you do something so asinine?" the question was delivered simply, clearly, and with no ambiguity.

Then again, it wasn't really a question: Riddle was feeling an unfamiliar irritation in the name of someone that wasn't himself turn quickly into a sort of simmering rage. Not that much because of Marie's or even Rueus' future, of course not, but because of the possible consequence of Minerva tattling to Dumbledore: "Rushing this kind of research can be disastrous, Minerva, you can imagine that much, even if you don't care enough about Marie to worry about...

Minerva's expression was quickly growing stormy under the accusations and disdain that Tom was showing her: "It's exactly because I care about her future that I..."

"How many full moons did you set putting your life at risk to discover a cure you don't need for yourself?" Riddle's question cut her reply short while his dark eyes seemed to pin her in place, knowing that his use of mere logic to force her to face the truth of the matter at hand was having the intended result.

"This has nothing to do with..."

"How many hours, days, and months have you taken away from your own interests, your own ambitions?" Tom was still seated in his own enchanted armchair, hands calmly clasped over one knee, and he was calm regarding the witch in front of him, even if his tone had become stark and unforgiving, "Do you think Rubeus wished harm on that poor..."

"I know that he hardly meant the current result!" Minerva snapped back, her wand once again hidden in her sleeve before she crossed her arms, "But that's hardly the point!"

"Of course." once more, Tom easily used her reaction to keep the tempo of the conversation going as he wished, not quite twisting her words, but deepening their significance to the point that she was forced to listen: "The point is that you refuse to see the truth of the matter at hand."

"Ignoring the not so easily discounted fact that Marie herself might be the element to determine the failure of rubeus' procedure," Riddle bagan, "our unconventional friend took the first and clearly most important step in the direction that might see lycanthropy as a whole turn from a sentence to live as a reviled member of society, regarded as more beast than a person, untrusted because of something beyond your control, into a condition that might be treated, if not outright cured."

Pursing his lips in a manner not dissimilar from Minerva's own unconscious tick, he kept talking: "Bringing the question to Professor Dumbledore is only going to slow down Rubeus' progress, nevermind the fact that he might be expelled with his wand snapped since he hasn't sat through his O.W.L.s just yet."

"More importantly," Riddle said while uncrossing his legs and rising to his feet, "even with this 'disaster' that struck a person you have no connection with, even with Rubeus' immediate decision to bring ourselves fully in his confidence, to the point where he's going to find us a Pensieve to use, you refuse to recognize that this event is probably going to be pivotal into changing the fate of countless others. I assure you, there are many werewolves in the world, that have suffered and will suffer for their whole lives, and an insanely large percentage of those would be willing to offer themselves for any chance, no matter how slim, to be cured."

"So I should just ignore what he has done?"

"Rubeus' mistake, if we can call it that," a twirl of his yew and phoenix feather wand turned once more his armchair into a drawing into his leatherbound book, "was to presume that the Marie had a strong enough sense of self to pass her trial unscathed, and enough bravery to not deem a life as a relatively mindless magic wolf the better alternative to an existence without magic in it."

Minerva, for all of her brilliance, was slowly going out of words to use: "She can't possibly have chosen..."

"We don't know, and we can't know for sure, can we?" Riddle clasped his hands behind his back: "But instead of helping, as you should since you gave Rubeus an ultimatum that he'll expect you to follow through regardless of any amendment on your part, you chose to cripple further his research by staying away, and wasting your time with..."

"Don't say it." her peremptory tone was enough to make Tom close his mouth, but not enough to erase his all-too-persuasive words. Minerva hardly appreciated being talked to in such a way, she enjoyed even less being told she was wrong. But she was a Gryffindor, and no matter how much she hated it, there was merit to Riddle's words.

Again, the witch sighed, recognizing that most of her indignation came from Rubeus' choice of magics in his search for a cure than from the failed final result. That had been more a warning sign of what she had truly been a part of since the Rùnda had been founded, and perhaps, a part of her had been frightened that the clear-and-cut ways of the world could be more like guidelines than anything else. She feared what her friends could become if they kept their neverending research going as unbound by conventional norms as it had been, and she has used Marie's situation as an excuse.

In any case, Marie's future was more important than some discomfort in Minerva's present. And worse, she now regretted her only conversation with Rubeus since their return from the Forest of Dean, when filled with unfocused rage, she had given her ultimatum: she knew that, if only to rise to the challenge, Hagrid would be trying to turn Marie to human before the next full moon.

It was the same thing she had done when they had first met, only scaled up to their vastly grown capabilities.

As her green eyes turned onto a Riddle that was barely hiding the smugness that oozed off him, she sniffed in irritation before a small idea for payback came to mind. Even if he was right, it didn't mean that he could simply get away with talking to her that way: she was Gryffindor, for Merlin's sake!

"Do you know what would help, Tom?" she grinned fiercely at his politely curious expression, "A fresh perspective. Test Filius, this week if you please, or I'll get him into the Rùnda myself."

With her piece said, she simply walked away, her chosen tomes floating behind like ducklings after their mother, and the feline gait that only the animagus could possess.

"If you gloat some more, you'll begin to purr, Minerva." Riddle didn't bother to hide his grimace as he began to walk by her side, but he nimbly avoided the elbow that the witch casually tried to plant in his side.

Together, the two left the Library, objectives clearer and clearer in their minds.

The shadows in the small courtyard flickered and moved with every strike of my wand on the anvil, small flashes accompanied by hissing embers echoing my every action.

The sky above was cloudy, even if it wasn't raining quite yet, and while the wind moved the immense boughs of the shadow-tree born from the death of Hagrid's father, not a sound could be heard beyond the low whoosh of the flames and my own breath. After all, I wasn't using my magic to forge something capable of sound.

The not-so-small roll of iron merged with shadows that I had crafted in preparation for our last hunt for a Chimaera sat silently on the anvil, not unlike a coiled snake basking in the warmth, as the metal glowed cherry red, the cracks in each link showing only a deep blackness that had once been a potion that held as its main ingredient the leaves of the tree that was the linchpin of the wards of my true abode.

I breathed in deeply, rising my wand high above my head, the mallet at the top of the length of holly and phoenix feather heavy even in the hands of my half-giant's constitution, and let it fall, my shoulders twisting to accompany the movement, my right leg slightly forward as if I could push a whole step into the motion. The wand temporarily adapted as a hammer crashed on the length of the chain with a muffled, easily dismissed sound, and finally, the iron chain began to fall apart beyond the widening of the cracks that had always been a part of it.

The principle behind the idea of the shadow-chain, back when I had first thought about it, had been simple: if I could use the bone of a werewolf to fashion a handle for iron knives tempered in a battery of potions capable of infusing meaning in what would have otherwise been a merely enchanted object, rather than a physical manifestation of a piece of magic, then I could surely repurpose some of the leaves shed by the shadow-ash tree that stood tall on the hill where my home was.

Having a magically crafted chain always on hand, nestled without a true width between my sleeve and my skin, where the shadows that were a part of it could be exploited, had sounded like a genius idea. And the realization, with a bit of tinkering when it came down to choosing the exact sequence of untested potions to use, hadn't been beyond my ability, requiring only a few trial runs before producing an actual, tangible result.

Almost alone in the courtyard, I observed how each link of the chain began losing its purpose now that I had brought the light of the same fire that had created it to bear in order to undo the fruit of my labors.

I took a step back from the anvil, grateful for the cool winter air that washed over my overheated form, taking away just a bit of the smell of clinging smoke and overbearing sweat that pervaded my sinuses: "Okay then."

A counterclockwise turn of my wrist later, and my wand returned to normal, the transfiguration imbued with charms that I had grown familiar with unraveling with ease as the holly and phoenix feather resumed the Shape first granted them by Ollivander's far more expert hands. Silently, I pointed it at the incandescent amalgamation of repurposed iron and quickly dying shadows that rested on the anvil, only to levitate the whole thing into a nearby stone cauldron, which had sat quietly over a flickering handful of blue flames.

I exhaled gutsly, raising my free hand to push back the hair from my forehead, only to hit something metallic, and immediately abort the motion, adjusting it in order to not dislodge Ravenclaw's Diadem from my brow.

As if summoned, a sapphire-eyed version of myself appeared in the corner of my eye, sitting weightless and without shadows of his own not far from my open-air workshop: "Didn't you already know that it was conceptually weak?"

"I hardly need Rowena's priceless Artefact to tell myself this much." I muttered with annoyance as I walked towards a succession of smaller pewter cauldrons, critically inspecting the progression of the different preparations before I began adjusting them here and there, knowing that I had some time before the unraveled mixture of shadow and iron was ready to be messed with. In any case, broken apart in its base components as it was soon going to be, I hoped to repurpose it: there was an unique magic to the tree that had been born from Hagrid's father's life and wand, and uniquely tied to me. I wsn't going to waste a single leaf.

The first experiment I had ever done with one of those had simply been the crystallization of one leaf in order to replicate something similar to Marvolo Gaunt's ring, and the 'unimportant' nature of the shadow would be enough to guarantee that the man would never notice the difference, not that he was brilliant enough to do so with a random switch in my opinion, but one could never be sure.

"Then why did you create it in the first place?" my own voice reached my ears, unable to stop even now that I had learned how to remain present in the real world while Ravenclaw's own version of a Path to Wisdom needled me.

"It was one of the side projects for Marie." I justified out loud, knowing that I was only talking to myself, but also aware that saying something out loud made it harder to reinterpret it later in order to follow what was more convenient. And since my self-imposed session with the Diadem was meant to help me gain some clarity, or perhaps a solution for my werewolf situation, it could only help to forestall any of my distracted, future attempts to avoid uncomfortable topics. "Gleipnir was inspiration enough: I needed something without any physical attribute that a werewolf would be able to break, and the esoteric nature of the ash tree..."

"Wasn't it something that you did only to see if you could?" my own voice rang in my head as I used a pestle to crush some dried Valeriana roots, "Isn't that why you tested it for the first time against the Chimaera you hunted with your friends?"

The mention of the chimera made me think about the enormous Goat head that I hadn't sold alongside most of the carcass to Slughorn. Of course, its cost had come out of my cut of the earnings, but Tom and Minerva had hardly complained, given that the first had kept one fang from the snake-tail and Minerva one from the lion-head: they had simply thought that, given the way that I used to kill my designated third of the magical creature, I had simply wished for a greater trophy to remind myself of our success. At least once I clarified that I wouldn't be stuffing it and placing it in the Rùnda.

The turn taken by my thoughts quickly and easily summoned my last interaction with the incensed witch, and I suppressed a grimace at the memory.

"I would have never thought you capable of something so heinous!" Minerva was a single step away from using the wand that she had already pointed at me, and while I was distantly curious to see who would be the better fighter, if her with her 'classical' approach or myself with my uniquely, deeply personal understanding of much fewer concepts, this wasn't really the time.

I shrugged helplessly, refusing to rise to the bait of a brawl of any kind to bleed off the tension that I felt on me: it was obvious that it wouldn't really help the situation. Magic had priority, as always, and in this case, it was more than my usual obsession with endless discovery. Years before, I had chosen to help Marie and Paul, and while I had failed one of them, I wouldn't let this last snag stop me from trying again and again with the woman now trapped in a form not truly hers. "What would you have me do, Minerva?"

"I don't know!" she snapped, "You're the one responsible, so do something to reverse what you've done!"

This wasn't the clever which I enjoyed being a friend of talking right now, I could see that much: she was merely a girl suddenly realizing that she was tangentially part of a situation with real, almost unfathomable consequences, and her usual brilliance, even the kind of dauntless grit that she had occasion to develop both against the Hydra and the Chimaera, were not helping her right now. Now the challenge was something that I had been fighting against since I had first met Paul and Marie, she was merely becoming truly aware of it. No rage would help, there'd be no venting the entirety of her emotions through an inspired use of Transfiguration, no target for her to aim her fir and dragon heartstring wand at.

"And the more help I receive from you and Tom, the easier and faster it will be!" I forcefully bit out, doing everything I could to control my own temper: even if I understood where she was coming from, I didn't appreciate being shouted at, nevermind ordered around, and I truly despised the sudden attitude of the witch.

Had she thought that what I had been wasting countless days on was a simple matter, with no potential for mistakes? That curing Lycanthropy was a mere project on the side? Didn't she realize the scale at which I was operating at? The difference between the importance of my research and her own struggles with a project for Flamel was the same one between the thesis of a PhD and the study of someone on the level of a Nobel Prize. I crossed my arms in order to stop myself from grabbing my wand to answer to the aggressivity she was showcasing: "The more time Marie..."

"Don't pretend to care about her well-being!" Minerva's green eyes were narrowed, almost sending the same sparks of her wand in the air: "You would have never tried an untested ritual, never have used those kinds of magics if you..."

"I should have gone shopping for a potion in Diagon Alley then?" I wanted to pull my hair because of the frustration: "Or just sit and ponder like every other two-bit wizard with the dream of finding a cure and none of the dedication to follow through when it came to try out their own ideas? Should I have paid for a section of the Daily Prophet to share my theories and ask for some suggestions by owl? It may come as a surprise, but if anyone really cared about werewolves, something would have come up in the last thousands of years!"

That hadn't taken the fight out of her, but had managed to bring her to a semblance of calm. That was almost worse.

Minerva stood stiffly for long minutes, refusing to match my gaze as she thought Merlin knew what, until she took a deep breath and put her wand away: "You should have asked Professor Slughorn, you're one of his favorites..."

"We both know very well that he merely enjoys the advantages that my experiments bring him," I shot down the obvious, and quite frankly stupid, suggestion, "the man cares only for himself."

"Professor Dumbledore then..."

"Is one of the brightest minds in the world, I agree." And should really be focusing on Grinderwald by now, between Marie's cure and a World Wide Wizarding World, I know which has the priority. I thought privately: "And if he ever considered the issue, he'd have already tried, perhaps successfully to find a cure. Given the absolute lack of any study conducted by him on the topic, and the amount of free time he had to research the Twelve Uses of Dragon Blood, I really didn't want to sully my efforts with the contribution of someone that wasn't going to put his all into it: it's one o the reasons why I never directly involved either you or Tom."

"And give the magic used, you didn't want anyone to know you were breaking the law!"

"You didn't protest when I made up a ritual to save Tom." I calmly pointed out.

"That was different! This..."

"Is exactly the same thing, only with a slow, looming curse on a stranger instead of a painful death on a friend." I tilted my head, curious to see if she'd spot the hypocrisy of her position, and acutely aware that I was a hypocrite myself for what I was about to say: "Why would Marie's life be any less important than Tom's? Her situation any less worth of lawbreaking than his?"

To that, Minerva finally remained quiet, out of steam, and maybe for the first time, at loss for words.

I should have known that it wouldn't be enough to stop her: pursing her lips, she straightened as much as she could, and glared at me with all of her quickly remounting fury. "If you don't cure that poor woman before the next full moon, Hagrid," and I could feel the peremptory nature of her tone, the sheer belief in the ultimatum she was giving: "I'll destroy the Rùnda, and I'll never research anything with you. I'll do everything I can to stop you from being able to do harm to another, no matter your professed intentions."

"What?" I blinked owlishly as I took a step back: of all the things she could have said, this wasn't what I had been expecting.

"Magic is the only thing you seem to truly care about, Hagrid: so I'll stop being a part of the Rùnda, and warn Filius off to start with." I didn't miss her use of my surname instead of my given name, the name that I was slowly growing to accept as mine, "And the first thing I'll do if you don't live up to your buster and undo the damage you've wrought is going to tell everything to Professor Dumbledore, he'll know what to do."

I shook my head as I forced myself to focus on the here and now: it wouldn't help to make a dumb mistake only because I was tangentially furious at Minerva, and mad for the whole situation. Fortunately, I didn't have to completely rely on myself in order to remain on track.

"Messing with your own thoughts is a rather dangerous idea, isn't it?" my own voice came from the translucent reflection of my sapphire-eyed copy, "More to the point: do you really think it wise?"

I paused my trafficking with the many ingredients I was working with, briefly looking at the image provided by the Ravenclaw's Diadem siting on my brow only to slowly gravitate towards the greater cauldron where I was separating the distilled shadows from the forged irons that had once been my short-lived attempt at creating something in the image of Gelipnir.

"Everyone changes during their lives: the choices we make, the routines we choose to adopt and stick with..." I murmured out loud, my eyes beginning to discern the contents of the cauldron, "this is merely a jump ahead instead of a slow trek. Of course, it will need to remain flexible enough to consent me to keep growing and even changing back if needed..."

Maybe for the first time since I had first gained it, the voice born from the Diadem's magic focused on a less philosophical task than the quest for Wisdom that Rowena had built it for. No, it wasn't quite like that: merely, the endless stream of questions that were meant to make someone question themselves, know themselves, and eventually the rest of the world, was now targeted upon a far more simple problem. One that was still part of my choice to pursue Wisdom, now more than ever aware of just what kind of damage I could cause with unintended consequences.

Hagrid's father had been already dying when I had simply decided to gain from the grim event, and it was almost simple now, a few years after the fact, to see it as the end of something and the beginning of something utterly new. Still, I couldn't simply decide to not regret my turning of the final moments of that man in panic-filled, painful instants: and even if I could have, I wasn't sure it would be wise to simply turn something like that off. If nothing else, it'd set a dangerous precedent: ignoring the consequences of my actions only because they didn't directly impact my life sounded like a process that would turn me quickly into another Voldemort.

Marie's situation... I was still in time to view it simply as a stop-gap: even with the king chess piece almost burning a hole in my pocket, I was seized by the enormity of the change I had managed to bring onto something that would simply be unthinkable or anyone else in the world. On one side, it was clearly a step in the right direction, only, it wasn't quite one forward, was it? more like a stumble, if that.

"Are you sure that Marie's situation is the best stage to test this idea?"

I huffed, grasping my wand once more in order to plunge it into the stone-carved cauldron, dipping the tip of the length of holly into the liquid-black of the shadows that crept among the molten, incandescent iron: "I'm not sure of anything right now."

With a wide, smooth movement, I completed an arc with my arm, and nodded to myself as trails of liquid shadow followed, almost tattered at the edges while my mind submerged itself in the understanding that I had deepened since Hagrid's father died. Shadows were unfit to be part of something like a chain, or at least, unfit to be an integral part of such a creation, not how I understood them.

They were cast by a source of light, they hid, they twisted shapelessly and silently, just as fast as the source of light that created them, they were unimportant and easily dismissed. Upon that very understanding I based the charm that made everyone not quite realize how much 'out of the norm' I truly was. My size, stabilized as it had at roughly four meters of height, was something that was already known in the school, by quite literally everyone. But just as every light cast shadows, everyone's knowledge of my unnatural size made them dismiss just by how much I was beyond the norm.

Slowly but with an uninterrupted movement, I poured the shapeless shadows into a single crystal vial: no matter the size of the twisting shadows, they fully entered their intended container. It wasn't a matter of space, of course, but of understanding: and the cork of the vial had been crafted out of a shed branch of the tree born from the death of Hagrid's father, which sealed them in without a hitch.

"Besides," I resumed talking as I turned towards the image of myself created by the Diadem, "testing that idea is a long way off."

A few words with Tom and Minerva while I explained Marie's state had been enough to inspire several possible avenues to change the situation. One of them had been sparked by McGonagall's incensed words: what if the human within the werewolf had simply lacked the needed focus to hold onto her own humanity? A lack of push in that direction could be enough to justify why the leftover elements of the ritual had changed the quicksilvery-state of the body into what best embodied the theme of the hunt that I leveraged to set the impossible loophole that destroyed the unthinking rabid rage that dictated the actions and purpose of the werewolf.

Legilimency wasn't only about reading another's mind: as Snape said in the books about a distant future, someone masterful enough in the art could control someone else's mind, reshape the thoughts, and do all manner of nasty things. Only, just like with the spells needed to create inferi, I'd use it to do good instead, or I would at least try.

Of course, using the Legilimency in such a manner upon whatever the hell Marie now qualified as could very well leave the caster insane.

Hence the project I was setting up: another ritual like the one that had created the current situation in the first place, done without a full understanding of what Marie exactly was, would be disastrous. So I needed something to protect myself while I delved into her mind, of course...

"Drowning your own thoughts in shadows?" my own voice came at me from the corner of my courtyard, "Do I have to spell out why it sounds like a terrible idea?"

"Hence the goat skull from the Chimaera, no?" I wasn't still sure about what I'd need to do to repurpose it, but the meaning was already there, I'd only need to coax it out somehow: "The role of the goat's head on the Chimaera, on the back of the creature as it was, capable of spitting fire as it was... well, it was some sort of a sentinel, always on the lookout, while the snake attacked from unexpected positions and the lion's head demonstrated the beast's pride."

"Do you wish to bet Marie's future, and the future of the Cure upon this tentative idea that you have?"

"Shouldn't I be the one making questions?" I snapped back, carefully setting down the crystal vial containing liquid shadows before turning fully towards my other self: "Repeating to me my own doubts..."

"You know that I know only what you do, I can merely exterminate your own questions." slowly, my sapphire-eyed self seemed to grow transparent before disappearing.

"Ideally, the shape follows the purpose, and I could fashion the goat's skull as a helm of sorts, cloaked in shadows to keep my own thoughts unreachable, but fluid." I could envision it: I'd need a way to marry the two, but being the one that killed the goat part of the Chiamera, I could take the spoil and repurpose it, while the tree that was the lynchpin of my wards would give me the shadows in some manner, "The bone of the magical creature should protect my own mind from the shadows..."

"And wouldn't the skull's nature impose anything of itself on your mind?" the Diadem's born voice rang in my head, "If only you had something to clear your thoughts with the same magical relevance of the other components..."

"The Diadem?" I asked to myself: "Somehow, I doubt that my little fire could be enough to reshape goblin-forged jewelry enchanted by the brightest witch of her age."

But the ideas already began to spin in my head: internalize the Path to Wisdom that the Diadem was meant to represent, marry it to the shielding nature of shadows on the outside, with the goat's skull to act both as a buffer and as a unifying factor. Clarity on the inside, and hidden on the outside. What I had managed to create up to this point was based on rituals, and I could easily manipulate the shadows from the tree because they were born from a sacrifice made willingly for me. The deceitful way in which I had Hagrid's father die for someone that he believed to be his son only empowered the shadows' inherent secrecy.

"Do you plan to pass the rest of your life with such creation on your head?" the part of me that was given voice by the Diadem spoke, "Provided that you can create such a thing in the first place of course."

I made my way over to an easily dismissed cauldron that sat easily on the side of the long bench holding the few brews I was working on. This, differently from the rest, wasn't born uniquely from my own mind. Instead, it was a modification of Riddle's own storing-ink. "Drawings that are also something else. Objects turned into ink stored on pages in a book: the obvious next step would be something like a tattoo, of course.

"What if you are cut over the tattoo?" my own voice rang in my mind, "Will the scar destroy the object? Will the magic holding it into ink fall apart, releasing the fragments inside your body?"

As always when my own doubts were voiced about a piece of magic, ideas about how to either solve or circumvent the problem quickly appeared in my mind: shadows were such versatile things, weren't they?

That of course, left the problem of finding a way to unite, and truly make into one pieces of magic that weren't already a creation of my own hands. The constant questioning of the Diadem, no matter how annoying, was an almost sure way to keep myself from foolishly causing more disasters.

Fire was fundamental in the process of change, it was the first concept truly studied in Charms for that exact reason, the breaking apart and the emergence from the flames as something new... "The only magical fires that I can think of are dragonfire, but I can already tell that those are meant to destroy and devastate, if more naturally than Fiendfyre, and phoenix fire."

My own connection with Fawkes could be a possible avenue for that, and...

"What about the man-made sources of fire?" my own voice asked me from inside my head, and I slowly set aside my straying thoughts about using my own blood along with the chimaera's one and distilled shadows to create an ink capable of storing magical objects as tattoos on my own person in a secure way.

It took me several seconds to find an answer to that question, after all, the reference it alluded to was a fairly obscure one: "Gubrathian Fire?"

The ever-burning flames were the only other form of magical fire besides the floo that I could think about.

"And what else?" I frowned as I stared into nothingness, until another idea popped into my mind, one that came with too many problems to count. And with so many rewards...

The vague but ever-present problem of finding a way to test and accept the next students into the Rùnda had suddenly found a neat, comfortable solution. "The Goblet of Fire uh?" I had absolutely no idea how to repurpose the flames for my purposes, but a cup capable of selecting the more worthy from a list, and enforcing a magical contract upon those? There was potential there: Minerva had once prepared a lot of notes upon the merit of transfiguring an object to reinforce the charms placed on it, or to charm a transfigured shape to reinforce the change. What was to say that a wooden cup of blue flames couldn't become a wooden anvil with the fire needed to take the most compatible traits of separate components placed onto it, an anvil upon which I could forge with my wand what I needed?

Suddenly, the talks that I had had with Orion Black about a possible business built on cross-breeding came into a much starker focus, and the not-so-small sum of galleons that I had managed to earn thanks to Slughorn acting as a fence for the result of our hunts, after all, what better demand could there be than the bloody sport known as the Triwizard for new and mysterious creatures? I'll need to hatch Aragog sooner rather than later...

Under the cloudy sky, and with the flickering light provided by the dying fire in the forge, the Diadem sitting on my brow glinted coldly as I thought about the many moving parts and projects that I had to juggle, and not for the first time, I remembered suddenly my original dream of creating the impossible, changing the world for the better in the process. Since when I had decided that all my efforts were to be spent in finding a cure for Lycanthropy?

Besides the urgency born from Marie's condition, I had left the topic eat too much of my focus in recent months, my vision had grown too narrow, and I had almost been content with the routine established around Hogwarts, the hunts under the full moon, and the more purposeful travels during the summer. When had been the last time I had entertained the thought of figuring out broom-less flight?

Weighted down by my self-imposed task, I had allowed myself to let my research in many other topics grind almost to a halt. I had forgotten about the rest of the world, limiting my avenues of research to what I could achieve comfortably from the Rùnda in Hogwarts, and I hadn't truly pressed Ollivander with my lukewarm letter, proposing the delivery of choice parts from my hunts.

I had forgotten, that most of what I did was a means to an end: the world wouldn't change to suit my dreams only because I wished for it. I had kept up my religious practice of Occlumency, my meditations upon bìprimal and basic concepts and symbols, but I had never taken the initiative to learn Legilimency, deeming it not so important...

"I have been slipping." I shook my head, suddenly feeling extremely tired, the moths of irregular periods of sleep and endless study managed to catch up to me despite my half-giant constitution and the battery of potions I constantly consumed to reduce the amount of time spent sleeping or eating.

With a wave of my wand, the fired under the cauldrons stilled before turning into a half-asleep mess of greenish blue embers, and lids were levitated into place before a large cloth was thrown on the working bench. A pull and a twist was enough to fish the still molten iron from the stone basin where I had separated it from the shadows, only to settle it in the dying forge: once I decided to return to work on it, rising up the charmed flames would be enough to allow me to manipulate the mundane material.

Walking inside my house, for the first time I noticed the dust that my half-hearted cleaning charms had never managed to remove from the corners of the rooms, and as I fell to sleep on my armchair, I idly thought about getting myself a House Elf...

AN

It's a rather clunky and hamfisted introduction for the Goblet of fire, I admit it rather freely. But I hope I managed to frame it in a novel way with the many plans of our MC. It has been a while since we last went 'full crazy inventor' with Hagrid, hasn't it? Still, I promise that nothing will suddenly be ready for him only because he thought about it. And while in this chapter we've seen some consequences and the beginning of a new direction, I can finally begin to have the hidden set ups that I have prepared since chapter two pay off in one way or another.

I quite agree with everyone that I can now pass to leaving the werewolf situation to develop in te background, we're all more than familiar enough with the process of trial-not a success-mistake from which I can learn that I don't feel the need to go over it again for this particular situation.

I sort of skipped the more immediate fallout of Minerva's full reaction to Marie's situation, as I thought it obvious and banal enough that a single small flashback counted for enough exposure: I showcased instead the slightly changing personality of Tom Riddle, who intervenes to bring Minerva in to help and to reconcile the two, even if they're unaware of such fact.

Minerva managed to get Riddle to acquiesce to Rubeus and her own request to test Filius, so no more stalling for him, and while our not-so-favourite Slytherin is still as self-serving and as cold as he can be, there are minute flickers of emotions, and the not quite understood, if voiced, thought of how much more meaningless everyone else but himself and those capable of raising him to further heights are.

I went back on the creation of the shadow-chain that I had mentioned back during the Cimaera's hunt, using the description of what Harid was doing to its broken state to slip in a good enough explanation: as always, I will no longer bother with the step-by-step selection and preparation of ingredients for each brew, since we've already set up a solid background for those things.

On the other hand, we have the Diadem used in a slightly more practical manner than a simple self-questioning in search for Wisdom: after all the more abstract use of the artifact is something that I can now more or less pass in the background, saving extremely important revelations of Rubeus' character that need to be seen as they happen. While I still love how I framed the Diadem in the beginning of this fic, as the writer I'm more or less biting my hands now to build loopholes to make it something different than a clever hiding of my direct intervention in the MC's development.

The important part of this chapter is in my opinion the flahsback of Minerva's snapping: it allowed me some minor character shaping. I don't want Tom and Minerva to become the usual 'yes men' that the two companions of the MC are in every Harry Potter fic that I have read.

Opinions? Hopes? Let me know!