The twin nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, that actually makes sense. This ring is for Hagrid, isn't it?" he asked, a knowing grin spreading across his face.
"How in the world did you guess that?" Julian asked, genuinely surprised.
"The poor bloke's been complaining about slugs in his garden for as long as we can remember," the other twin said with a chuckle.
Julian smiled. "That sounds exactly like him. You know, when I told him to think of any enchantment that might be useful, slug repellent was the very first thing he mentioned," he said, tone full of exaggerated suffering. "Tell me that does not sound like the setup to a bad joke."
He finished with a dramatic sigh, shoulders slumping in mock despair.
Both twins burst out laughing at his performance.
Julian checked the cooling metal with a flick of his fingers and nodded once he felt it had firmed up enough to work properly. With a casual wave of his wand, the chunk of dragon steel floated over and settled on the anvil. His hammer and a pair of tongs lifted themselves off the ground and dropped smoothly into his waiting hands.
"The first step now is just to tidy the shape up so it becomes easier to work with," he said, eyes focused on the metal.
This part was simple, if a bit tedious. It involved a lot of light, controlled strikes, each blow nudging the steel a fraction closer to the outline he wanted.
In this particular case, his goal was to gradually round it out. Once he turned it into a mostly rounded lump, he would compress it into a puck shape and then fix any flaws that appeared.
As soon as the metal cooled too much to move cleanly without risking damage, Julian slid it back into the furnace, turning the heat down so it warmed without melting again.
"Do not expect to finish a job like this on a single heat," he told the twins as he resumed his rhythm. "Even if it looks like the metal stays hot forever, it actually loses workable heat very quickly."
After two more cycles of heating and shaping, he finally held up a roughly spherical piece of dragon steel, smooth and free of visible cracks. That alone was a good sign.
He set it into the furnace again and let it grow hotter than usual, though not to the point of liquefying. When it reached the perfect temperature, he pulled it back out and struck it with a heavier blow, flattening the sphere just a bit.
"Now that I am on the important shaping stage, I have to be careful with how hard I hit it," he explained. "If I overdo it and crack the metal, I might have to start over entirely."
The twins watched every move, eyes fixed on the way he handled the tool and steel.
"See how the face of my hammer has a slight curve to it?" Julian said, angling the hammer so they could see the shape clearly. "That curve lets the force spread more gently to the sides when I strike, rather than smashing straight down. It reduces the risk of cracks compared to a perfectly flat face."
He went back to working, attentive to every detail. After each few strikes, he flipped the metal over, constantly rotating it to make sure the pressure and stress were distributed as evenly as possible.
Bit by bit, the flattened sphere became a thick, fairly even metal puck.
Julian left it on the anvil and reached over to pick up a metal punch.
Carefully, he shifted the puck so that it rested over the hardy hole in the anvil. Then he positioned the punch at its exact center and gave the tool a few light taps with his hammer, denting the middle of the metal.
He flipped the piece over and did the same on the other side.
"What I am doing now is creating a clean, even hole," Julian explained as he worked. "By applying force from both ends, I move the metal outward and to the sides instead of smashing it straight up or down."
As time passed, the twins began to see what he meant. The center of the puck grew more and more indented on each side, the material stretching outward in a smooth ring.
With a few more well placed taps, the remaining thin layer of metal in the center gave way, and Julian neatly punched through, leaving a small hole straight through the middle.
"Now I am going to widen this opening and clean up any sharp edges the ring might have," he said calmly.
...
At some point during the lesson, Professor Flitwick had slipped into the workshop and taken up a quiet position near the back wall. He did not interrupt, choosing instead to listen as Julian patiently walked the twins through each step and the reasons behind his choices.
To his delight, the notorious pranksters were completely absorbed. Their usual restless energy had turned into focused curiosity, their gazes glued to the process instead of plotting their next scheme.
Every member of the staff knew the twins had an impressive natural talent for creating things. Unfortunately, that creativity usually manifested in joke products, trick items, and elaborate pranks that caused chaos across the castle.
Watching them now, Flitwick felt a flicker of hope.
It pleased him more than he could easily express to see them genuinely engaged in learning a proper craft. If they got deeply enough invested in the art of making, they might even find themselves with less time to dedicate to their more disruptive hobbies.
I wonder if I could get away with proposing a class or club focused on crafting, he mused.
Hogwarts did offer alchemy, but hardly any students joined, thanks to its steep entry requirements. Simpler practical subjects like smithing, jewelry crafting, or wand lore adjacent metalwork might attract a far larger number of students.
I will raise the idea at dinner and see how the others react, he decided, mind already sketching out possibilities as he continued to watch Julian shape the future slug ward ring into existence.