This time, Julian not only dialed back the strength of the energy he was channeling, he also changed the type of enchantment altogether, shifting his focus to a fire aligned effect.
The moment his intent shifted, his spirit changed with it. The glow that surrounded him turned a flickering, restless red, dancing like flame, even though it remained perfectly stable in truth. It had simply taken on the properties of the element he was invoking.
He raised his hammer, gave the wooden ring on the anvil the lightest of taps, then stepped back in a hurry. According to the crafting method, failed elemental enchantments had a nasty habit of going spectacularly and dangerously wrong.
He braced himself for an explosion.
Nothing happened.
The energy had very clearly flowed into the wooden ring and taken hold, yet the usual burst of destruction never came.
Frowning, Julian moved in for a closer look, examining his work carefully.
It did not take him long to spot the difference.
The wood no longer looked like normal oak. Emberlike fissures, glowing a dim, smoldering red, now traced through the grain, as if the ring were full of buried coals.
The system pinged in the back of his mind, registering the result as a completed item, and rewarded him with ten points for the creation.
Julian stared at the ring, more confused than pleased. His first successful attempt at enchanting an organic material had taken less effort than he expected, and that bothered him.
He replayed the experiment in his mind step by step, analyzing every change he had made, trying to isolate what had made this attempt different from the others. No matter how he turned it over, however, the crucial point eluded him.
Left with no obvious answer, he resorted to what some people might consider cheating. He invoked the system's appraisal function and directed it at the ring.
...
[RING NAME: N/A
Grade: COMMON
Abilities: Detonate
Description: An unstable experimental ring crafted from oak that adopted a burning aspect during the enchantment process.
System appraisal: In simple terms, this is a magical grenade. Even the slightest infusion of magic will trigger a violent detonation.]
...
Once he read the full appraisal, the realization clicked into place.
Organic materials, unlike most metals, came with their own inherent tendencies. They had natural properties that made them more suited to certain kinds of enchantments.
Wood, for instance, was naturally flammable. That affinity meant it was predisposed toward fire based enchantments, which in turn increased the chance of such enchantments taking hold successfully.
Unfortunately, that discovery did not help much with Julian's actual goal.
He was not aiming to attach only one very specific type of enchantment to organic materials. He wanted the freedom to imprint any effect he wished onto them. Fire, life, protection, mind, anything. Having wood be "extra friendly" to fire was interesting, but did not solve the core problem.
Julian shrugged once he understood the limitation and slipped the explosive ring into Greed for safekeeping. The last thing he needed was to accidentally feed magic into it while working and blow up his own workshop.
He moved on to the remaining test pieces.
Every attempt that followed ended in failure. Rings cracked, crumbled, shattered, or simply destabilized into useless fragments.
Even so, he refused to see it as wasted effort. Each failure taught him a sliver of something. A nuance in energy flow here, a small tolerance threshold there, an adjustment to how much spirit an organic frame could handle. Minuscule gains, but all of them nudged him a tiny bit closer to the distant goal he was chasing.
Time slipped past while he worked, until the rumble of his stomach and the faint sound of movement in the halls reminded him that dinner was underway.
He packed his tools away, locked the room behind him, and headed for the Great Hall.
He was so lost in his thoughts that he did not bother to check his appearance before stepping inside.
...
It was only after Julian slid into his usual seat and began piling food on his plate that he realized something was off.
People were staring.
Not just a few either. An uncomfortable number of eyes from nearby benches were fixed on him, with expressions ranging from amused to baffled.
He glanced down at himself and finally understood.
I am covered in sawdust, he thought, a bit sheepish.
Fine particles clung to his robes, his sleeves, even his hair, giving him the look of someone who had spent the afternoon wrestling a bag of wood shavings.
"Apologies for the mess," Julian said, letting out an awkward little chuckle. "I got carried away with something I was working on."
He flicked his wand over himself in a smooth motion. The dust all over his clothes and hair rose up in a swirling cloud, compressed into a tight spinning orb above his hand, and then vanished as he banished it away.
"What in Merlin's saggy beard did you get into to wind up looking like that?" Seamus asked curiously. The rest of the table leaned in, eager to hear the answer.
"If you absolutely must know," Julian said with a grin, "I was trying to figure out how to make working rings out of wood, since I do not have a furnace set up just yet. Most of the trials ended in explosions, but I would be lying if I said I did not enjoy learning from my mistakes."
He had no idea that, high at the staff table, a subtle listening charm fed those words directly to the Headmaster's ears.
Dumbledore smiled to himself as he heard the boy's cheerful explanation.
Ah, the genuine desire to learn and improve. Always a pleasure to see it bloom in a student, he thought, pleased.
...
"Not to worry, mate. We can sort that out tomorrow," one of the twins called down the table, grinning. "We just need to go pick it up from the Three Broomsticks."
Julian's face lit up at once. "Excellent. I have sorely missed the feel of a hot furnace while I work," he said brightly.
"It shows, mate," Ron chimed in. "Who in their right mind chooses to sit next to a blazing fire in a hot shack like that? While drinking hot tea, no less! I am starting to think you are part dragon or something."
"He actually did that?" Seamus blurted, surprised.
"Yeah," Ron answered, nodding vigorously. "Earlier today when we went to visit Hagrid. He just plopped himself right down next to the fireplace like it was nothing and drank his tea without even breaking a sweat. It was mental."
At the staff table, Dumbledore quietly turned to Hagrid to confirm the detail.
"Now that yeh mention it, he did look mighty comfortable by the fire," Hagrid admitted after thinking it over.
"How interesting," the old wizard murmured, eyes twinkling over the rim of his glass.
The rest of dinner passed without much incident after that. Once the initial curiosity about Julian's sawdust covered entrance and exploding wooden experiments faded, most students returned to their own conversations, leaving him blessedly free to eat and think in peace.