This alternative was approved by everyone. ("In the box? Can I fit in at my size?" Hagrid asked with great concern after agreeing.)
On the day Norbert was about to learn to fly, the Earl finally returned to the Room of Requirement with the seventy-seven harpy feathers—strangely, Newt didn't accept Cohen's money.
"After reading the letter, he felt you shared his interests."
The Earl tossed the bulging bag onto the table, the galleons inside clinking crisply.
"He meant that if it weren't for the magical creatures, he would have given you his box."
"But I didn't see his reply in it." Cohen rummaged through the bag full of blue harpy feathers and the unopened bag of galleons, but there was no reply from Newt.
This meant Newt knew the Earl could talk—could a talking owl really get back from Newt?
"Yes, yes…" the Earl stammered.
"After I spoke human language, he was planning to buy me from you…"
"Ungrateful wretch," Cohen remarked mercilessly.
"But he suddenly changed his mind after I asked, 'Can the Owl Purchase Contract be cancelled?'" The Earl angrily plopped down on the owl bed, covering his egg. "You featherless creatures are all bad, I've seen it all now…"
Cohen crawled into the newly bought trunk and expanded it with the bird and snake feathers. The space was now unbelievably large—Cohen had initially thought the seven 100s in the book referred to volume or something, so he had added some extra budget…
"So the seven 100s are the side lengths…"
Cohen clicked his tongue in amazement.
The space inside the box had expanded to a size large enough to accommodate a dragon using only seven bird-snake feathers—in keeping with his noble virtue of not wasting anything, Cohen used all seventy-seven. Now, he was too lazy to calculate the box's boundaries; a single spell would stretch as far as the eye could see.
Was this the wizarding power of imagination?
Buying a house didn't seem so necessary anymore.
It was probably because Newt kept so many endangered creatures; a normal merchant couldn't possibly produce over seventy feathers at once—they'd have to skin a whole family of bird-snakes—and even then, normal merchants usually found bird-snake feathers by chance in the deep forest.
After the space stabilized, Cohen began to design the layout inside the box, such as the sky, grass, and sun—but Cohen discovered a serious problem.
The transformations for these things weren't in the Standard Spells, the Transfiguration Guide, or the Complete Book of Positive Spells.
When in trouble, one should seek help from the headmaster, so after climbing out of the box, Cohen went straight to the headmaster's office—even though it was almost curfew.
"A pile of cockroaches," Cohen said to the stone beast at the top of the stairs.
Dumbledore hadn't changed the password in a week; it seemed the smell of a pile of cockroaches was really tempting.
"Knock knock knock—" Cohen came down the stairs to the headmaster's office and knocked.
"Come in," Dumbledore replied with a yawn from inside.
Cohen dragged his suitcase through the door and saw Dumbledore wearing a dark blue nightgown, his long white beard reaching his waist. He looked…
"Do you sleep with your beard outside or inside the covers?" Cohen couldn't help but ask.
Dumbledore looked intently at Cohen. This kid couldn't have come in the middle of the night just to ask this question, could he?
But seeing the trunk Cohen was dragging behind him, Dumbledore knew Cohen's progress—the trunk for raising the dragon was finished.
"Beards can be rolled up like towels, but I still prefer myself without one," Dumbledore chuckled.
"I noticed your trunk is finished—the joy of completing a work is understandable, but please forgive me, for both the elderly and children, sufficient sleep is essential..."
[If you weren't the perverted old man following an eleven-year-old wizard in the middle of the night, this might be somewhat convincing...] Cohen thought to himself.
But what Cohen showed Dumbledore was a wide-eyed, pitiful expression.
Dumbledore had considered many possibilities for interacting with Cohen, but the sight of a Dementor cub acting cute in front of him was still too unsettling—
"Alright..."
Dumbledore realized he couldn't resist a student's reasonable request—which was why he had a curfew outside the Headmaster's room.
However, Dumbledore didn't immediately modify the scene inside the box according to Cohen's needs. Instead, he explained the corresponding spells and transfiguration theory to Cohen and left him an old notebook that looked decades old.
Cohen's astonishing learning speed truly surprised Dumbledore. He had originally planned for Cohen to take this knowledge home that night to study and then try it out, or even for Cohen to come back the next day to say he had succeeded—but Cohen learned and mastered it on the spot.
"Cohen, I think I need to remind you of a few things."
After helping Cohen create the sky, sun, and grass inside the box, Dumbledore's tone was no longer his usual relaxed one.
He spoke to Cohen with concern:
"Sometimes, we can't expose our talents too early—perhaps we aren't afraid of the harm caused by certain people or things, but our lives involve more than just ourselves; there are family and friends, peace and tranquility—these are things that magic and knowledge can't buy."
"When you become prominent in the outside world, trouble and accidents will always find you unexpectedly. Before that, you need to grow, to grow into someone who can handle them."
Cohen, of course, knew what Dumbledore meant.
If the Ministry of Magic knew that Cohen was rapidly becoming someone they couldn't handle, who knows what kind of chaos his life would be thrown into.
Dumbledore worried that the Ministry of Magic would notice something unusual about Cohen—they would definitely take coercive measures against him like frightened birds, even though they had never had any effective solutions for Cohen before.
The Ministry of Magic doing so would only turn Cohen into a complete enemy, and Dumbledore knew this all too well, so he was doing everything he could to salvage the situation.
"You're safe at Hogwarts, but off campus, please don't do anything too outrageous in your personal capacity—to avoid unnecessary trouble."
Dumbledore gave Cohen one last piece of advice after Cohen finished sealing the box.
"Now that this little project is finished—I think we should all go to bed now. I'll have Fawkes take you back to your dormitory, so you can avoid a detention and prepare more for this year's final exams."
"By the way, don't tell anyone about this box—its existence, like keeping a dragon as a pet… is discouraged."
Dumbledore winked mischievously at Cohen, like a playful old man.
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