The merpeople's skin looked deep and dark in the moonlight. Half their bodies broke the surface of the Black Lake, long spears and tridents gripped in their hands, heads tilted back as they stared straight up at the moon.
The night was too black for Charlie to see them clearly.
Still, he felt their eyes on him—several pairs of them.
Made sense. Creatures that lived in pitch-black water probably had excellent night vision. But they didn't seem bothered by his presence.
One after another, more merpeople surfaced. A second circle formed around the first.
Then they began to move. The inner ring spun counterclockwise while the outer ring turned the opposite way. A faint, eerie sound rose from the water—each syllable stretched out long and slow, like some ancient chant.
Charlie's mind flashed to old legends of sirens and their deadly songs.
Can I even listen to this? Will it mess with my head?
He took a careful step back, wand tight in his fist, every sense locked on his own mind. One wrong feeling and he was gone.
A minute passed. He let out a slow breath.
No danger. The song wasn't aimed at him. It was for the moon.
He looked up. The full blood moon was almost there.
At the same time, thin threads of rust-red moonlight began drifting down toward the lake.
They're collecting it too?
Charlie frowned. He was harvesting blood moon essence himself, but that didn't mean he felt the same way about it as they did. Every story he'd ever read tied blood moons to bad omens, ghosts, and worse. These merpeople lived at Hogwarts. Shouldn't they lean lawful good? He'd heard the tales—drowning kids lifted back to shore by merpeople and giant squids.
So why were they pulling the blood moon into themselves like this?
Maybe I've been naïve. Maybe they're only "good" because Dumbledore keeps them in check.
Their pace was painfully slow anyway.
He shook the thought off, raised his wand, and pointed it at the moon.
After a few slow sweeps, a thick drop of rust-red essence began to form at the tip. It felt heavier than regular moonlight—denser, harder to pull. At this rate he'd never fill a vial the way he usually did. He had to move faster.
He poured every ounce of focus into the work, tuning out everything else.
The sharp pain in his forehead finally dragged him back to reality. He didn't stop. He popped a Moonlight Chocolate into his mouth, gave himself sixty seconds, then kept going.
Still too slow.
Charlie stared at the thin layer of essence in the vial and scowled. He couldn't keep spinning it like cotton candy—pull a drop, drop it in the vial, start over. He needed it to flow straight in, like an hourglass.
He dropped into the snow, shoved the open Material Vial into the drift, and lifted his wand high. His left palm hovered above the mouth. Crimson moonlight poured down like a curtain. His left hand guided it, funneling the gathered essence straight into the glass.
It worked.
But the focus it demanded was brutal. The world started to blur. The horizon vanished first, then the Forbidden Forest, then the merpeople circling on the lake. Everything narrowed to a single point of absolute concentration.
Then the world shifted.
The crimson flow suddenly thickened—ten, twenty times stronger. No need to look up. He knew exactly what had happened.
The blood moon was complete.
Essence crashed into the vial like a waterfall. Charlie felt the torrent hammering through the magical channel he'd built. A warm trickle ran from his nose.
He broke the spell, ate another Moonlight Chocolate, and wiped his face.
Way too expensive.
He glanced at the vial. Half full—maybe a gallon. Still a solid haul.
Out on the lake the merpeople's song rose higher, sharper, almost frantic. Their ritual had hit its peak.
Charlie looked up. The full blood moon was already fading. A sliver of silver light reappeared on the moon's edge. The heavy blood-red aura that had filled the air vanished in an instant, like a balloon popping.
So that was the pattern. The essence built slowly through the eclipse, peaked during total coverage, then crashed the second it ended. No gentle fade.
Good enough. Charlie capped the vial, pushed himself up on shaky legs, and headed back toward the castle.
By the time he reached his dormitory the night was more than half gone. He set the vial on the desk and flipped open his notebook, skipping the front section and the recipe pages. He went straight to the middle, to the page marked with a dried maple leaf.
He read the note already there:
Weather oracle balls can predict weather. The rune array is complex, but the middle circuit at the base contains the rune for sensing natural elements.
Charlie picked up his quill and kept writing.
The merpeople's ritual can guide natural elements. I don't know if it only works with moonlight, but if something can be guided, it can also be sensed. Reversing my natural harvesting method and turning it into a spell or device anyone can use is completely possible.
He understood the truth: being able to cook one perfect meal by hand didn't let you open a chain of restaurants. If he wanted to sell chocolate worldwide, he couldn't do it all himself—even with shadow clones.
He finished the note, flipped back to the front of the notebook, rubbed his eyes, and looked at the blood moon essence.
Then he picked up the thin copper spoon, scooped out a single drop, and brought it to his mouth without hesitation.