[x] If nothing else, then I am grateful – Their action might have been heinous, but you would not be alive without it. You would not have learned of the wonders of the world, would not have had the possibility to discover them. You are glad that they did what they did.
[x] If nothing else, then I am grateful – Their action might have been heinous, but you would not be alive without it. You would not have learned of the wonders of the world, would not have had the possibility to discover them. You are glad that they did what they did.
[X] In the end, I am the only one who I can judge– You do not think that his actions were justified. Even if you would not be alive without him and his wife, the cost was too large. The logical conclusion is easy, but you do feel conflicted. You remember how well they have always treated and cared for you. Who are you to judge their actions, when you have not walked their shoes?
This is off topic and too early to consider since Jacob is in his 3rd year here, but can we research how to cast spells nonverbally from the library? and if so, how would that mechanic work in a duel? bonus points for us or malus points for our opponent considering all you have to go on is wand movement I think?
This is off topic and too early to consider since Jacob is in his 3rd year here, but can we research how to cast spells nonverbally from the library? and if so, how would that mechanic work in a duel? bonus points for us or malus points for our opponent considering all you have to go on is wand movement I think?
It's likely that a DADA or advanced Charms book will have tips on nonverbal casting.
But I expect that Jacob's own breakthrough will come through his study of 'accidental' & wandless magic, if only because that's already started, while he isn't currently looking at non-verbal casting at all.
[X] In the end, I am the only one who I can judge – You do not think that his actions were justified. Even if you would not be alive without him and his wife, the cost was too large. The logical conclusion is easy, but you do feel conflicted. You remember how well they have always treated and cared for you. Who are you to judge their actions, when you have not walked their shoes?
It's likely that a DADA or advanced Charms book will have tips on nonverbal casting.
But I expect that Jacob's own breakthrough will come through his study of 'accidental' & wandless magic, if only because that's already started, while he isn't currently looking at non-verbal casting at all.
Maybe, but if we want to take a look at basically anything that we may find interesting (including non verbal casting) we can always use one of these actions...
[ ] In Search of New Spells – Go into the library and look for new spells that you could try to learn. If you have some specific effect in mind, write it down.
[ ] In Search of New Potions – Go into the library and look for new potions that you could try to learn. If you have some specific effect in mind, write it down.
[ ] Do Something! – Be creative. Or go and do nothing. Your decision really. Specify what you want to do.
I am particularly interested in learning how to become an animagus (especially now that we have a good clue what our animagus form will be and it is magnificent) and learning how to create Ancient Magic weapons (Especially after seeing how the Magic Bow of our ancestress could one-shot giants, one of the most powerful and magic resistant creatures on the Magic World)
[x] If nothing else, then I am grateful – Their action might have been heinous, but you would not be alive without it. You would not have learned of the wonders of the world, would not have had the possibility to discover them. You are glad that they did what they did.
[x] If nothing else, then I am grateful – Their action might have been heinous, but you would not be alive without it. You would not have learned of the wonders of the world, would not have had the possibility to discover them. You are glad that they did what they did.
I stopped following the quest when it became an endless slate of dream sequences, but I don't want the QM to think it was bad fiction. I wouldn't know, obviously. I signed on to do one thing, and hopped off when it started being something else, is all.
[X] In the end, I am the only one who I can judge – You do not think that his actions were justified. Even if you would not be alive without him and his wife, the cost was too large. The logical conclusion is easy, but you do feel conflicted. You remember how well they have always treated and cared for you. Who are you to judge their actions, when you have not walked their shoes?
I stopped following the quest when it became an endless slate of dream sequences, but I don't want the QM to think it was bad fiction. I wouldn't know, obviously. I signed on to do one thing, and hopped off when it started being something else, is all.
I would greatly prefer it if the people who hated the dream sequences dropped the quest. Rather a small voter base whose enjoying the game than a large one filled with people who hate certain parts of the quest.
I would greatly prefer it if the people who hated the dream sequences dropped the quest. Rather a small voter base whose enjoying the game than a large one filled with people who hate certain parts of the quest.
You don't even have to drop the quest. It is a small but narratively meaningful part of it, which I personally like. If you don't read it you can probably read the other updates with no issues, as long as people don't get salty there's no problems.
[X] In the end, I am the only one who I can judge – You do not think that his actions were justified. Even if you would not be alive without him and his wife, the cost was too large. The logical conclusion is easy, but you do feel conflicted. You remember how well they have always treated and cared for you. Who are you to judge their actions, when you have not walked their shoes?
Just caught up, interesting quest. I want to see how long it is before we break canon over our knee somehow. We have a few years before things really start heating up, and we're on track to be a monster by that point.
[X] In the end, I am the only one who I can judge – You do not think that his actions were justified. Even if you would not be alive without him and his wife, the cost was too large. The logical conclusion is easy, but you do feel conflicted. You remember how well they have always treated and cared for you. Who are you to judge their actions, when you have not walked their shoes?
Adhoc vote count started by Tzaphquiel on Feb 26, 2021 at 5:36 AM, finished with 220 posts and 71 votes.
[X] In the end, I am the only one who I can judge – You do not think that his actions were justified. Even if you would not be alive without him and his wife, the cost was too large. The logical conclusion is easy, but you do feel conflicted. You remember how well they have always treated and cared for you. Who are you to judge their actions, when you have not walked their shoes?
[X] If nothing else, then I am grateful – Their action might have been heinous, but you would not be alive without it. You would not have learned of the wonders of the world, would not have had the possibility to discover them. You are glad that they did what they did.
[X] I do not hate you, but I pity you – You don't want to break contact with the man, because you do not want your parents to find out what the reason for this is. He has not many years left to his life. You will humour him, but he is not the man you had thought him to be.
Update has been sitting around for a few days. It ballooned out of proportion and I think I'm going to cut it down. Haven't found my stride yet, but I hope it's still a good read.
Your eyes stayed on the ordinary sink, remembering the tiny snake that had been carved into the copper tap.
For a moment you were in your second-year. There had been rumors; so dominant in fact that it had reached even you. A monster was hunting students and Muggle-borns. You remembered Justin telling you of his experiences, when he looked into the Basilisk's eye through the Gryffindor house-ghost, before he was petrified and lost five months.
"The Chamber of Secrets," you whispered, your eyes still fixed on the sink.
I have just realized that we have just found the answer to all our financial problems...
Having located the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, and we are just a couple of words of Parsel away of entering and find an extremely valuable skeleton of a Basilisk...
I mean if Acromantula's Poison is expensive I cannot imagine how much more expensive would the poison of a Basilisk's be... And even of we don't want to sell it, It would still be an extremely useful potion ingredient, or even good material for an alchemical dagger.
And unlike most poisonous snakes the Basilisks in HP has lots and lots of fang from which we can extract it´s venom.
I have just realized that we have just found the answer to all our financial problems...
Having located the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, and we are just a couple of words of Parsel away of entering and find an extremely valuable skeleton of a Basilisk...
I mean if Acromantula's Poison is expensive I cannot imagine how much more expensive would the poison of a Basilisk's be... And even of we don't want to sell it, It would still be an extremely useful potion ingredient, or even good material for an alchemical dagger.
And unlike most poisonous snakes the Basilisks in HP has lots and lots of fang from which we can extract it´s venom.
The only problem with this is that the Basilisk venom may be simply too letal to use if we aren't extremely good at potions and we will probably need special kits to handle it.
The only problem with this is that the Basilisk venom may be simply too letal to use if we aren't extremely good at potions and we will probably need special kits to handle it.
I mean, the trio managed to make good use of that venom by simply grabbing the Basilisk fang from the dental root and making sure to stick it by the pointy end in the Horcruxes, so I don´t think it will be hat difficult to handle it...
[X] In the end, I am the only one who I can judge – You do not think that his actions were justified. Even if you would not be alive without him and his wife, the cost was too large. The logical conclusion is easy, but you do feel conflicted. You remember how well they have always treated and cared for you. Who are you to judge their actions, when you have not walked their shoes?
Present Date: 13th March 1994
Current Wand: Fagus wood, Phoenix feather core
And soon enough, another few days passed by and Sunday arrived. Going by the time of the day, most of the studentship should be gathered at the Quidditch game. Well, that was not true, right? You were not. Surely the only student who chose not to. You had come to love these off days, in which you had the castle all to yourself.
Since the tea-date you'd spent at Hagrid's, you had allocated a considerable chunk of your time either in the archives, checking for dates or at library looking through additional sources in old newspapers and ancestry books.
The first assessment of your research had been an easy one; information was a difficult thing to come by.
Now, finally at the end of your research, you were standing in the middle of the Trophy Room, staring at a particular medal that was hanging in front of your eyes.
The Trophy Room was connected to the Armour Gallery of the third-floor, proudly displaying an assembly of awards, trophies, cups, plates, shields, statues, and medals that were kept in crystal glass displays all around the large assembly. There were lists of Head Boys and Head Girls and other extraordinary students, going back to the very first generation that had been taught in the castle a thousand years ago.
Your past connotations with the Trophy Room had produced two of the early hidden passageways you had found. One was hidden behind a mirror, the other behind a painting on the wall opposite of it. The mirror-way went up, the painting went down; a simple riddle to either teach you the dichotomy of magic or empty of any deeper meaning. You hadn't been sure at times. But neither of those were the reason why you had come here.
Instead, your eyes were resting on the silver medal hanging in a glass showcase: "You've been quite the mystery," you said.
The specific vitrine you were looking at was the one holding all 'Medals of Merit' that had ever been granted to a student. They were earned for outstanding marks in every examination during graduation. A feat that was rare, but not unheard of. It had been given out exactly eight times over the past one-hundred years.
"William Weasly, Lily Evans, Frank Longbottom, Janett Emily Prewitt and … " you stated, reading from right to left, going back in time. Then you came to the name you had been looking for: "Tom Marvolo Riddle."
There were more memorials with his name on it. He had been a Headboy, won more competitions than you had heard of and had even been awarded a trophy for exemplary behaviour – whatever that meant. If you had simply gone by what you were seeing in this room, Tom Riddle may have been one of the brightest and most successful students in the last hundred years. Joining school in 1937, you could follow almost every single school-year of his with his insignias before he graduated in 1945. Every step on his way up had been new record or honorary feat.
But there was more to him than just scholarly success. Tom Riddle, it turned out, was quite the interesting person.
You had found very few mentions of him in the library, but they were there … you just needed to look close enough. An article in 'Wizards Best' listed his spell-work as to be one of a kind. That, you did not care about though. What was important was a thrown away description in a half-sentence to introduce Tom Riddle to the reader. They called the young student an orphan.
You had latched on to that. A few hours followed, going through the list of known magical family-names of Europe (something that was very well documented), but gave you no new leads. You deduced that Tom most likely was a Muggleborn orphan. It was an easy fit to both circumstances.
"But you are not a Muggleborn," you said. "Not really, are you?"
You did not find any source as to where he grew up, certainly not what orphanage he had come from, but it seemed as if in 1937 things had changed for Tom Riddle. Whatever Muggle orphanage he had come from, that year a new world opened up to him. He came into a new school and was not only better than everyone else … he had seemingly limitless potential. If you believed the few articles and archives praising him, he had been similar to Sally-Anne in potential and skill.
Three years later Rubeus Hagrid and Myrtle Warren joined Gryffindor and Hufflepuff respectively. One half-orphaned by that moment, the other a Muggleborn. Destiny had its irony, making them such important figures in the story of Tom Riddle. Their histories were so much alike on paper. Only a year later Hagrid's father had died, making him the full orphan that Riddle seemingly was.
A few years went by. Tom Riddle established himself as a prodigy, Myrtle was fighting to find her place in this new world and Rubeus Hagrid was free, young and happy to be able to escape his sorrows by going on one adventure after the other.
And then time reached 1943. In the midst of the Second World War, three young people were growing up in the castle. Each one of them bound by their shared destiny. You could almost see them before you. There had been a picture of a young Tom in his sixth year. He looked handsome and charming. A perfect example of what the Wizarding World cherished. Next to him was Rubeus Hagrid, a young boy, thirteen years of age. Even so, he was much taller than the older Slytherin. And then there was Myrtle Warren. She had been bullied often, was not able to stand up for herself and seemed to have no one around to care for her.
Each of them so different, all of them on paths that were about to cross.
Tom Riddle had opened the Chamber for the first time in his sixth year. He had freed the Basilisk, terrorizing any Muggleborn in the castle, before he killed a girl that was hiding away near the entrance to the Chamber.
A theory, that depended on the skill to be able to open the Chamber. So, you had looked into that.
Here, sources were muddy at best, complete fantasy at worst. The one thing all of them shared was that only the 'Heir of Slytherin' could open the Chamber. Which brought you to a problem in your prior deduction; how could a Muggleborn be the heir to anything?
When there was no answer possible for the explanation you had come up with, your theory was wrong. And so, you challenged prior results.
If you couldn't find out more about Tom Riddle's heritage, then you could go the other way around and look for heirs of Slytherin.
Luckily, ancestry was as much ingrained in the culture of wizards as their need for wands. A standard pureblood wizard knew the last five generations of family by memory. Thus, you expected an easy half-hour research for this. In and out in one evening …
It had taken the better part of two days.
The starting line had already been a complete failure. Starting with just the infamous Salazar Slytherin, there was almost no documentation to be found as to how many children he'd had or even what their names were. It was frustratingly difficult to discern Mythology and Legends from cold facts.
You needed to skip five hundred years, before you found three families that were cited as having a strong connection to the Hogwarts founder; The House of Steward, the House of Sayre and the House of Gaunt.
With this you could finally begin the research. Here, you expected three separate family lines to keep track off from that moment in time. Another false assumption it seemed. Where most ancestry documentations looked like a tree, this one looked much like a circle. These three families intermarried almost exclusively for the next two hundred years, before there was only one of them left.
While there were some connections to other known houses (If you read the name Black, Potter or Malfoy one more time, you would hex someone), only the Gaunt family was still mentioned in the context of having a strong connection to Slytherin. You found the Biography of Corvinus Gaunt, a man born in 1783 who had done two remarkable distinctions in his life. The first was that he had proposed an elaborate plumbing system at the castle as a student in Hogwarts and had later installed it himself as an adult. The second one was a line in the introduction to his own history, where he called himself a 'Heir to the line of Slytherin'.
From there it was easy enough to track down the last known members of the family Gaunt. There was one Merope Gaunt, a girl, who was born in 1907 and her older brother, Morfin Gaunt, born in 1899. The name that gave you a sensation of success was that of their father though. This was when you realized that you had finally found the correct explanation -Marvolo Gaunt, born in 1855.
"And that's how I found you, Tom Marvolo Riddle," you said, still looking at the medal hanging in front of your eyes. His full name was not displayed often, but you knew that you had seen it somewhere before. Who would have thought that it was the engraving on the silver medal, which was given to him as an honour, would guide you to his forgotten sins.
"There was no confirmed death for the girl, Merope but I found out about her brother and her father," you said, talking to the ghost of a boy who had gone through school and had deceived every single person around him.
You had searched for Morfin Gaunt, because you had not been able to find anything about Merope. Neither of them had ever been students at Hogwarts. Only with the Gaunt boy, you were finally lucky. You found his name on an article about a murdering of Muggles and shortly after another one, stating that he was to spend the rest of his life in Azkaban.
While there had been quite a few articles in between, describing the trials, there had been only one that actually named the Muggles. Two men and one woman; Mary, Thomas & Tom Riddle.
"And there, the other shoe dropped, Tom." you said, a smile on your face. "By that point, I was sure to have found out all about your heritage, even if I was not sure how it all fit together yet."
Not only had you found evidence for Tom Marvolo Riddle being a Gaunt, you had also found a case with large similarities to the one you had been already investigating. There was a murder, this time not one of a Muggleborn, but of three Muggles instead. Then there was the scapegoat that fit the crime so extraordinary perfectly; Morfin Gaunt had been fined for using magic on Muggles a few years prior.
But only when you started thinking about the motives, did you actually understand the crimes.
"You were ashamed of yourself," you said, having no one to talk to, but the silver medal of a farce that happened in this very castle fifty years ago. "A Half-blood, raised by Muggles. Where you were the perfect student, this taint stained your self-image."
This Tom Riddle, while possibly more brilliant than you, did not truly understand what magic was actually about. Obsessing about the own heritage … something that you could have easily fallen victim to. He had hated his past so much that he had tried to terrorize those that had the same upbringing as him. Even if you were still unsure if that first murder had been on purpose or an accident. Tom had chosen to find another outcast. Hagrid was even more similar to him. Both half-bloods, both different than the rest of the students. But where Hagrid had accepted himself, it seemed that Riddle had started to fall for his own lies.
With the first murder, he he tried to hide that he was the descendent of Slytherin and had opened the Chamber of Secrets. With the second one, he had tried his best to destroy any evidence of his birth. He was quite possible the son of a Gaunt (either Merope or Morfin himself), had killed his Muggle family and framed his Gaunt family to hide any connections to himself.
Tom Marvolo Riddle was a genius, a sociopath and had been fighting for what he thought was his road to greatness … but you were not sure if he had achieved that just yet.
With that conclusion in mind, you had felt like letting the case rest. You were quite secure in the validity of your analysis, even if some details were still fuzzy … but something kept bothering you. There was scant a mention of the boy past 1950. Only one single article that mentioned him travelling through eastern Europe in 1956 and then nothing.
How could one of the most talented wizards in British history disappear like this?
There were a few spells one learned in second-year to find specific information in any given book. Going through the Newspapers year by year and doing just that, finally brought you to 1972.
'After Werewolves, the first chief giant is rumoured to have joined the faction of the Dark Lord.'
You remember sitting there, until you were thrown out of the Library. You read any article that you could find of the early rise of Lord Voldemort. Only the first few articles even addressed his origins as being unknown. Thereafter it soon became something of common knowledge until even his name stopped to be written out.
It was Lord Voldemort first, the Dark Lord a few months later and then, at some point in time, it had become You-Know-Who … A wizard that appeared out of thin air, so powerful and terrifying that one faction after the other joined his cause or was annihilated instead. He was described as someone being so great in fact, that he rivalled the powerful and almighty Dumbledore. By then, the Headmaster had been uncontested for three decades on the world-stage. It was the biggest attribution of power one could get in the seventies to be called his equal.
"This didn't make any sense, you know?" you said, turning around and pulling your hands up to the back of your head. You had learned a lot from Sally-Anne. It didn't matter how hard someone worked or how dutifully he practiced his spells, there were some monsters that were simply born to be on a completely different level.
"Someone like this can't simply appear without having established himself in a young age as a prodigy. A wizard like this would have left a trace. You would be able to predict his developments the moment he stepped into a school or even touched a wand!"
Here you turned around, the medal was still hanging there, unmoved by your speech. You sighed. Who were you even talking to? You had wanted an appropriate finish for your latest case … but this time there was no hidden ghost that had the decency to talk to you.
You had looked through the newspapers, even finding the one describing the survival of a familiar Harry Potter and celebrating the death of the Dark Lord. But in a decade of documentation, you found only two pictures of him.
One in a black robe, taken from afar where you could not make out any features. Another taken in the aftermath of a battle at Diagon Alley. Here you could see his features for the first time. If this was the same person as Tom Riddle, they looked nothing alike. Gone were his charming features, leaving behind a grotesque creature with white skin and without a nose. The picture had one thing, that finally confirmed your growing suspicion; a large snake slithered in between his followers and moved up to the Dark Lord and opened his mouth, before the Dark Lord answered with something himself.
A Parselmouth. It was not that the skill was simply rare, you had only found three confirmed cases of them in the last one hundred years. One of them was going to school with you and was rumoured to have killed the Basilisk, the other two were most likely the same person.
"Kind of underwhelming doing it like this," you said to yourself.
The Medal of Merit did not answer your accusations. Instead it stayed in place, where it had been for half a century and where it would likely stay for at least another.
→ You have earned 4 Time Echoes.
You solved what you had set out to understand. The Mystery of Tom Riddle now turned out to be the Origin of the dark Lord Voldemort, revealing another Great that walked the world. You do not understand all of his thoughts yet, but you got an inkling to his character. The question is, do you share this with the two Hufflepuff's that set out with you to solve the mystery?
[ ] Yes, share your insights.
[ ] No, do not tell them.
New Option:The Splitting of a soul (2 Normal Actions) – Through experience and deduction have you come to realize that the manipulation of a soul is possible through intense emotions, good or bad. This has created new questions to which you have no answers yet. You will not attempt it … but your curiosity is demanding to know what is theoretically possible if one sets out to go the lengths. (Required:Alchemy P-, Dark Arts P. Gives Ability: 'Horcrux'; ?)
Even if there had been no grand finale to this, you still felt satisfied. Your eyes rested on the curious medal hanging right in front of you. Your mind went from high capacity to frozen brain matter in the span of a few second, as you finally relaxed and closed your eyes.
This had been bothering you for a while and it felt good to be able to let it go. The unanswered questions had been eating at you, like they always did.
Lost in your thoughts, it took you a moment to realize that an external stimulus tried to stir you out of the stupor. A breeze touched the backside of your neck, calling for your attention. Had you forgotten to close the window?
Wait.
There was no window in the trophy room.
By the time, you turned around, two things surprised you. One; it hadn't been a breeze, but instead a spell that had ben cast behind you. Which meant that you had somehow been able to feel the magic dispelled into your direction. And two – less exciting, but more dangerous –someone had joined you in the room.
You saw the focused face of a boy standing at the entrance to the trophy room.
A fraction of a second later the spell hit your chest and hurled you back brutally, throwing you right into the glass showcase behind you. You let out a scream, when the shattered glass cut into your shoulders and back. Failing to grab anything for support, you and most of the vitrine came crashing to the ground. Glass, wood and trophies clattered around you or fell right on top of you, while you were desperately trying to guard your head with arms and hands.
You made out fast movement through the loud clattering. Before you could do anything but move to the side to get away from all the glass, the Slytherin boy had already reached you and kicked you in the stomach, throwing you back a second time. The glass cut even deeper this time.
You didn't scream a second time, instead you could only hear his laugh. "How could someone be so stupid? Everyone is at the Quidditch Game," he said. "Everyone but you plug-ugly maggot," Graham Montague shouted, likely high on adrenaline now that he had gotten you where he wanted to.
"I've been watching you, Basques. I just knew that I would find you in the castle today."
Standing above you, he would look large and menacing to any third-year. He was more muscular than Goyle, his forearms large and hairy and his face an angry grimace as he raised his wand for a follow-up.
Montague had gone lengths to assure his rapid success. He had ambushed you, not allowed for anyone to interrupt and had gone sure to attack first and double-dip before you could defend yourself. Most third-years would have been intimated and would have frozen up in shock.
"Langlock," he said, pointing his wand at you.
You were in pain. Your back was already feeling wet and warm, because of the deep cuts. Everything hurt. The world was spinning. There was something to having a giant spider trying to maul you though. Once a humongous statue tried to squash you, things looked different. It made you feel more secure about the situation than you may should. Even if you were not sure how to get out of this, one thing you knew for sure; you had been more afraid with a Dementor's hand on your shoulder.
To begin with, you had already been scramming for your wand, while he had taken the time to talk down to you.
"Protego." There was a moment for intricate spell-work and creative thinking and there were situations like this in which the only thing that counted was fast reaction time. His spell hit your shield, giving you a second to sit up. There was blood on your hand, dripping onto the ground. You ignored it.
Only a moment later, you shouted: "Expelliarmus!"
Montague was slightly pushed back, but was able to keep his balance. His wand on the other hand shot out of his control and flew past your face to the ground behind you.
A quick win.
Now that he was without wand, you finally pushed yourself away from him and tried to get to your feet. Even so and despite your last growth spurt, you still needed to look up at him.
"Are you satisfied now?" you asked with clear annoyance in your voice. Something wet and warm moved your down back, starting to drench your robe. "What was your end-goal here, exactly? Kill me in a dark corner? Are you retarded or something? What kind of stupid backwards thinking is this?"
The anger in his eyes did not subside. Even you could see that this boy before you despised you. "What's wrong with you, idiot?"
He spit out on the ground between you. "People are ridiculing me. Everyone calling you a Nutter and asking me how I could lose to such a plug-ugly maggot, when I clearly did not. I'm showing them that they were wrong," he said. Even if he was still trying to look menacing, without a wand he was nothing more than a toothless snake.
"How daft are you? I will …" you started to say, only to be interrupted by the older boy.
"Shut up," Montague shouted. He was getting frustratingly annoying.
"So, you're insulted?" you asked with growing anger in your voice. "Let me repeat myself then; how bloody dense are you to-"
Dense enough, it seemed.
Because who in his right mind would rush wandless at another wizard? The attack was stupid, reckless and … surprisingly effective. His shoulder hit your neck, bringing both of you to a fall. You felt your back flare up in burning pain.
On the ground, Montague moved first. He used your momentarily disorientation and tried pushing you down with his weight and to crawl to his wand. Only a few feet separated him from success.
He was on top of you, larger and more muscular than you and using all of his weight to stop you from moving your wand and cast a spell. This was highly uncultured. A wizard was above physical fights. But who were you, if not someone who adapted well to radically new circumstances?
Instead of trying to force your wand-arm to move, you instead used your free left hand to hit his face from below. It was the second punch you had thrown in your entire life and it seemed that you were developing quite the talent.
Montague yelped in pain as he jerked away, holding his nose: "… you bloody arsehole." Blood started to drip between his fingers and down his hands. Soon his blood joined yours on the ground. "You broke my nose!" he shouted.
Huh. Who would have thought that you had been better in taking in damage than the aggressor himself?
You were not above learning from your opponents though. Where he had attacked you first and tried to attack you again, while you were down on the ground, you had stopped the aggression after disarming him.
You would not repeat that mistake.
Another fist landed on his face, this time hitting his ear by accident. The scream he let out was satisfying enough. You pushed him away with a kick to his chest and pushed yourself away and up. By the time he tried to rush back at you, there was already your wand waiting for him.
By now, you had taken full control over the situation. His advantage as a first-mover had been fully dispersed now. Even if you were still feeling lightheaded because you were rapidly losing blood, you felt calm and ready to finish this. This time you did not hesitate.
"Reparo."
The broken glass had been all over the floor. Small and large pieces came to life after you had stepped back out of their shortest trajectory route. As one they shot back to their original location by the broken glass vitrine. While one would typically focus on the spell to guide such pieces around hindrances, you specifically did not this time around.
Suddenly there was glass flying through the air and a Slytherin boy that was standing right in its way. His eyes wide, when he realized what was about to happen.
Soon enough the screaming started. You didn't look away as his face was cut or as Montague fell to the ground, ignoring the wounds on his body to put pressure on his bleeding left eye. Soon there was much more blood of his on the ground than there was yours.
Seconds passed, in which you observed him, your wand not moving away from him. He continued to scream in pain and horror, having forgotten all about his surroundings.
Only after a while, you finally sighed and looked around to find most things back in place. There was blood on the vitrine and the ground, but you couldn't bring yourself to care. The pain in your back was worsening now that you were regaining your calm state of mind.
"Please," you said, now only a shade of distant annoyance in your voice. "Don't attack me again. This is a bother," you said
Walking up to the spot where his wand had dropped to, you came to a halt and looked down at it. It was smooth, brown and fully intact.
A few months ago, you would have let it be at this. Montague was beaten and mostly broken on the ground. But you had learned to be careful, to think ahead and … to not repeat mistakes. Nei'it-ruˆm would not allow any mistakes.
When you left the room there was only a crying boy and a broken wand left behind.
