Hermione's voice had dropped low, worry written all over her face.
It was in that moment that Altair actually saw her as an eleven year old girl, with all the softness and uncertainty that came with it.
"Put your heart back where it belongs. When the sky falls, someone tall enough will hold it up. Hogwarts has Dumbledore, a whole staff of professors, and every upper year student in the castle. It's not going to come down to a bunch of first years to sort out."
"And even if none of them were around, there's still me, remember? I'm rather good at this sort of thing."
Altair said it with quiet certainty, and Hermione, looking at him, felt a flush rise fast in her cheeks. She managed a soft little sound of agreement.
After breakfast, they headed down to the dungeons for Potions.
Snape's expression was even grimmer than usual, colder too.
He opened the lesson by tearing into Harry and Ron for a while before finally getting into the day's material, which was mostly about handling and preparing certain potion ingredients.
Altair had already taught himself the whole term's Potions curriculum ages ago, and he had plenty of hands-on brewing experience behind him besides, seeing as he'd handled every bit of the Orc potion ingredients himself. As it happened, today's ingredient was one of the components in that very recipe.
His flawless work earned him ten points from Snape, while Neville, predictably, ruined a batch through sheer clumsiness and lost five, and Harry got docked another five for supposedly failing to look after him properly.
The moment the lesson ended, Snape swept out in a hurry.
Even so, he didn't forget to pause at the door and remind Harry and Ron to report to him that afternoon for their detention.
Harry's face had gone rigid with fury, his hands shaking so hard he could barely control them. Altair suspected that if Harry had actually had the power to back it up, he'd have gone after Snape right then and there.
Once class let out, Hermione headed off to the library as always, Harry and Ron sounded like they were planning to go find Hagrid and vent, and Altair went back to the dormitory, then slipped out invisible, bound for the Room of Requirement.
With the castle's ghosts and portraits all stirred up and watching now, he had to be careful.
He'd gotten his hands on a troll's heart the day before, which meant he could finally try brewing the Uruk-hai potion. Every step was laid out in precise detail in Saruman's experiment notes, so he wasn't worried about the attempt failing.
The Uruk-hai draught was far more involved than an ordinary Orc-Draught, though, and it ate up a great deal of time. Even with the self-stirring cauldron doing the work, two hours got him only a single finished bottle.
"My mental reserves can handle a few more self-stirring cauldrons running at once. Next time I can brew several bottles in one go."
"Or I could try summoning a lich. A lich with enough intelligence left in it could probably help with the brewing too... though summoning one inside the castle might draw Dumbledore's attention."
He lifted the bluish-purple potion and gave it a gentle swirl, then added in the ratman soul he'd first prepared back at the Shelby estate.
The murky liquid inside the bottle cleared at once, the color deepening from bluish-purple to a rich, dark purple, giving off a faint, unusual current of magic, like a pure, clear violet crystal.
"One bottle of this, and I can turn an ordinary animal into an Uruk-hai warrior more frightening than any troll."
The corner of his mouth curved up.
As for which animal to use, he'd already settled that in his mind some time ago.
Deep in the Forbidden Forest lived a pack of werewolves' offspring, bred during the wolf-form transformation under a full moon. They existed only in wolf form, but their intelligence rivaled a human's, and since they weren't classed as magical creatures with any innate power of their own, they were exactly the right raw material for the potion.
For now he only had the one troll heart, enough for ten bottles of the potion, but there was no rush. This first bottle was mostly meant to grab a Forbidden Forest wolf pup and see how well it actually worked.
He put the potion away and left the Room of Requirement.
Brewing had taken up a fair chunk of time, and by the time he made it to the Great Hall, lunch had already been underway for half an hour. Hermione had finished eating by the time he arrived.
"I was starting to think you weren't coming at all. I asked Malfoy, and he said someone saw you head back to the dormitory and never come out again."
She let out a breath of relief at the sight of him.
Whatever Altair did, he was never late, meals included, so him turning up half an hour late was practically unheard of. She'd nearly convinced herself something had happened to him somewhere in the castle, especially with everything that had gone on the night before.
"A boy's got to eat eventually."
He sat down and gave the table a light pat, and a full spread of lunch appeared in front of him at once.
"I meant to get some reading done back in the dorm, but I fell asleep instead. Reading's dreadfully boring, honestly."
He tried the pasta with meat sauce and decided it wasn't bad at all. Say what you like, Hogwarts' house elves clearly knew what they were doing.
"..."
Hermione had nothing to say to that. Unbelievable. Here she'd been genuinely worried he'd skipped a meal, and it turned out he'd just dozed off reading.
"Where are Harry and Ron, anyway? I don't see them."
Altair glanced over at the Gryffindor table, didn't spot either of them, and turned to Hermione to ask.
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