"I'm not getting anywhere!" Hermione said with a frustrated sigh as she threw her quill down on the desk in front of her.
Over a week had passed since she had identified the nine elements needed for the ritual, with Harry's help of course. She had kept the items Harry had conjured for further study so she now had all that was needed to perform the ritual except a sample of gold. She thought that she could probably just use a galleon if she needed to study the gold but worried that it might have protective charms placed on it that could disrupt her analysis. The only piece of gold in her possession was a thin bracelet given to her by her mother after she had gotten top marks in first year. It was one of Hermione's most treasured possessions.
The problem Hermione now faced was much more complicated than she had assumed it would be. Each element had a rune that corresponded with it and the book she had found informed her that using the wrong rune or element would end in disaster for the person attempting it. With nine runes and nine elements it meant that there were literally hundreds of thousands of different ways they could be arranged. Those two facts meant trial and error was definitely not the right way to figure out the answer to this puzzle. She truly believed she had access to all of the information she needed, but it would still take a lot of work to finish it. 'And what for?' she sometimes wondered. She still had no idea what the ritual was for or at what price the benefits would come, and she was not foolish enough to think that there would be no consequences from the ritual. All rituals involved some element of sacrifice, usually connected whatever benefit the ritual provided. For instance, one of the rituals listed in her book would make a wizard immune to the effects of fire and heat but much more vulnerable to cold. Another ritual enabled its user to breathe underwater, but only after sacrificing the ability to breathe air.
The author of her book had speculated what the ritual was used for, but it was quite clear he had no idea either. The one thing he was sure of, although Hermione was not convinced, was that it would give its user access to a kind of magic no one else had. That statement was vague enough to mean anything though. She pondered those things for a little while longer before closing the book and deciding to end her research for the day. She was spending a lot of time on this project and worried that her friends would start to wonder what she was doing with her time. Her friends, however, were not at all surprised by her behavior. It was actually quite typical for their bushy haired friends to disappear for hours at a time when she was trying to learn something new. And so, despite Hermione's worries, they had no idea anything strange was going on.
...
Harry, meanwhile, had his own puzzle to solve.
He had found that Neville was very insecure about his abilities as a wizard and as a result did not learn well in classroom settings where other people were watching and judging him. His atrocious performance in Potions was mainly due to Professor Snape's hostile attitude towards him. Once he was removed from the classroom and learning from a tutor in one on one sessions he began to rapidly improve. Many people in the school had assumed that Neville was an idiot due to his poor grades, but Harry was discovering that was far from true. Neville was actually a quite intelligent young man who desperately wanted to improve himself but had always been too shy and uncertain of himself to ask for help. During the course of the year Harry's friendship had broken through those boundaries and was starting to have a positive effect on him. Underneath it all Neville was honest, hard working, and a loyal friend. It made Harry wonder why the Sorting Hat had chosen to put him into Gryffindor and not Hufflepuff where he might have fit in better. But then again, perhaps Neville's brave side was just waiting for a chance to show itself.
As Neville improved his magical problems became more obvious. He was shockingly inconsistent in casting spells for reasons that Harry was unable to identify. Neville could cast the same spell ten times, with perfect wand movements and incantations, and only get the spell to work six or seven of those times. After one such unexplained failure Harry motioned for Neville to stop casting and then began pacing back and forth in front of his confused friend.
"This doesn't make sense, Neville. You're not doing anything wrong that I can see, so it's got to be something else." Harry explained as he paced. "The only time I've seen anything like it was in second year when Ron was trying to use a broken wand. Wait a minute, your wand isn't broken is it?"
"I don't think so, Harry." Neville answered, but began inspecting it anyway. Neither of them could find any cracks or blemished on the wand however.
"No, I guess that would have been too simple." Harry said with a disappointed frown.
"Harry, do you think it matters that I'm using my dad's wand?" Neville asked uncertainly. "Gran always said he was a powerful wizard and his wand had to be just as powerful, so that can't be it right? Harry's jaw dropped open in shock. He had never even thought to ask Neville if he was using a wand that had chosen him, he just assumed Neville had. The Weasley's re-used wands because they could not afford to buy new ones for all of their children and he knew the Longbottoms would not have that problem.
"Of course it matters Neville!" Harry replied. "You can't just use any wand you want to, the wand has to pick you."
"What are you talking about?" Neville, who had never been to Ollivander's and thus never heard his speech about wands picking wizards, asked.
....
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