Deep within the Room of Requirement, Damian stood over a metal dissection table.
He was currently dissecting the massive Sandworm Monster corpse he had dragged back from the Gap World. Having completely dismembered the beast, he discovered something incredibly bizarre. The creature's internal structure was entirely devoid of normal organs.
The monster's abdomen was just a dense, chaotic mass of compressed flesh and blood. However, upon severing the connection between the worm's neck and its main body, Damian found a head-sized, pulsating cyst. He highly suspected this organ was the monster's true core.
He carefully sliced open the smaller secondary worm-heads sprouting from the creature's neck. Just like the lower half of the beast, they were completely hollowed out, lacking any natural digestive or respiratory systems, filled only with that same compressed flesh.
"This creature was definitely not naturally bred," Damian muttered.
He set down his scalpel and activated the magical incinerator embedded in the stone wall, tossing the gruesome remains inside. The Room of Requirement had thoughtfully provided not just a surgical table, but a high-heat furnace for disposing of experimental waste.
"Meow."
Hearing the roar of the furnace flames, Nox woke from his nap. The black cat stretched his front claws forward, elongating his spine as he let out a long, lazy yawn.
Nox had accompanied Damian into the Room of Requirement today. Ever since the magical feline had begun learning Damian's rune-based Meditation Method, Damian made sure to teach him Ancient Runes whenever he had spare time.
To continue advancing the progress of the Meditation Method, one needed to construct a complex "Runic Model" within their sea of spirit. It wasn't as simple as just copying a shape; the caster needed to fully comprehend the rune's fundamental magical meaning to manifest it internally.
Because of this steep learning curve, Nox's progress was slow, so Damian even smuggled the cat into his actual Study of Ancient Runes classes.
After the monstrous waste was entirely reduced to ash, Damian peeled off his dragon-hide gloves and scrubbed his hands in the nearby washbasin.
"Nox, use your shadow-clones to help me keep an eye on Professor Quirrell's movements," Damian instructed, drying his hands on a towel.
Nox tilted his head, looking up at Damian with a confused, golden-eyed stare.
"Scatter your clones and monitor the main road leading to Hogsmeade Village," Damian clarified. "If you see Professor Quirrell heading toward the village, come find me immediately."
Nox nodded in understanding. He stood up and gave his tail a sharp shake. The tip of his tail seemed to blur, splitting off several small, shadowy balls of fur that dropped softly to the stone floor.
Instantly, the fur balls rapidly expanded, morphing into identical copies of Nox.
The shadowy cat clones quickly scattered, darting out of the Room of Requirement. Some took up vantage points in the castle windows facing the grounds, while others sprinted all the way down to the Hogsmeade gates to lie in wait.
After thoroughly sanitizing the lab, Damian headed down to the Great Hall for dinner.
"Is that a new magical toy?" Damian asked, taking a seat at his House table.
He noticed his dormmate, Jerry, happily holding a palm-sized, squishy green frog. Damian had seen these strange frog models in the hands of dozens of students over the past few days. Magical novelty items from Zonko's frequently swept through Hogwarts as fads, but Damian rarely paid them any mind.
"The Frog Wallet isn't a toy, Damian," Jerry said, smiling mysteriously. "It's a brilliant tool for financial management."
"Financial management?" Damian repeated, raising an eyebrow.
It was incredibly jarring to hear that term coming from Jerry. Although Jerry was technically a descendant of the pure-blood Abbott family, his branch had split off generations ago and was notoriously strapped for cash. As a result, Jerry barely had any pocket money to his name.
Jerry eagerly explained. "You just feed the Frog Wallet ten Galleons, and it magically spits out a brand new frog! That's how everyone else got theirs."
"That thing doesn't look like it's worth ten Galleons," Damian said, frowning. The enchanted frog was honestly quite ugly, making him seriously question the aesthetic tastes of his fellow students.
"But wait, there's more!" Jerry said, his eyes gleaming. "The best part is, once a frog eats ten Galleons to activate, it spits out one Galleon every single day!"
Damian picked up the rubbery frog in surprise. "So, you get your investment back in ten days?"
Jerry nodded vigorously. "Do you want to invest in one? It's a guaranteed return in a week and a half!"
Damian examined the frog closely. The material was highly elastic, allowing him to squeeze it into bizarre shapes before it snapped instantly back to its original form. Honestly, if it didn't occasionally give a faint magical twitch, a Muggle would just assume it was a cheap rubber stress toy.
But more importantly, the specific mechanism of 'invest ten coins to get one coin daily' triggered massive alarm bells in Damian's head. It perfectly mirrored the illegal Ponzi schemes and pyramid scams he had seen relentlessly covered on the news in his previous life.
Damian had a dark premonition. If the professors didn't intervene soon, greedy students were going to dump massive amounts of Galleons into these frogs to multiply their returns.
The flaw in the magic was obvious. Goblin-wrought Galleons were heavily enchanted with complex anti-counterfeiting charms. Even if a wizard possessed raw, solid gold, they couldn't simply forge legal wizarding currency to bypass Gringotts.
Wealth didn't just magically appear out of thin air. Unless these cheap rubber frogs were highly classified goblin artifacts, the Galleons they were "generating" had to be coming directly from the pockets of the newer investors.
"Do you have one of the Galleons your frog spat out today?" Damian asked seriously.
Jerry dug into his pocket and proudly produced a heavy gold coin. "It just coughed this up when I sat down for dinner. I already checked it—it's completely real."
Damian took the coin and ran his thumb over the goblin-stamped serial number. His runic sensitivity immediately picked up the complex anti-counterfeiting charms. It was indeed a genuine Galleon.
Damian tossed the coin and the squishy frog back to Jerry, his expression dead serious.
"It's fine to play with it a bit, but don't invest too much into it.
Galleons don't appear out of nowhere, nor do they disappear into thin air. If someone makes a profit, someone else must inevitably suffer a loss."
Jerry shrugged dismissively. "I just wanted the one. Don't worry, I don't have the capital to buy a whole army of them anyway."
Suddenly, a massive commotion broke out near the far end of the Slytherin table. Dozens of students were standing up on the benches to get a better look, and kids from the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw tables were actually running over to join the spectacle.
Curiosity piqued, Damian and Jerry stood up and walked over.
When they pushed through the crowd, Damian's jaw dropped. A massive section of the dining table was completely covered in a sea of green, squishy Frog Wallets.
Standing at the center of the spectacle was Draco Malfoy, who was frantically shoving handfuls of gold Galleons into the mouths of the frogs.
Damian did a rapid visual estimate. There had to be at least two or three hundred frogs on the table. That meant Draco had invested at least two or three thousand Galleons into the scheme.
Damian rubbed his chin, shaking his head. He understood that this kid, Draco, was about to become the bag holder.
He asked, "Draco, where did you get so much money?"
Draco turned his head, wanting to take the opportunity to show off the Malfoy family's immense wealth, but when he saw it was Damian, he instinctively shrank back and said honestly,
"I borrowed it..."
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