Chapter 18
"It might be guarding something! Alright, I'm going to bed. Lest you two come up with another bad idea and get us expelled!" Before parting with the two, Hermione voiced her guess. But the tone of her last sentence still revealed a trace of anger.
"Why was she yelling at us? It's as if we dragged her out by force." Ron shrugged, showing disdain for Hermione's anger.
"Guarding something?" Harry paused in his steps, as some clues flashed through his mind. He remembered seeing news in the 'Daily Prophet' at Hagrid's place about Gringotts being broken into. But the goblins at Gringotts said that before the intruder entered, the vault number 713 that the intruder was searching had already been emptied, and nothing was missing from it.
Harry knew that if nothing was missing from inside, then the item the intruder wanted to steal must have been that grubby little package Hagrid had taken out.
So, was the thing the three-headed dog was guarding precisely that small package Hagrid had retrieved from the Gringotts underground vault? After all, the place safer than Gringotts was Hogwarts.
Suddenly, Harry felt like he had touched the edge of the truth.
The next day, Harry had already told Ron everything he knew. The two were still obsessed with last night's nighttime adventure, curious about what exactly the three-headed dog was guarding. But Hermione showed no interest in it at all.
Perhaps also because of being implicated and losing points, Hermione had stopped paying attention to the two. Originally, she was a rather proud person; for such a student, failing to earn points in class was humiliating, let alone being caught on the spot by a professor during a nighttime excursion and losing dozens of points at once.
Therefore, for several days in a row, Hermione ignored them.
Of course, aside from classes, Harry also began busying himself with his own affairs, with Wood's help, he started Quidditch training.
The rules of Quidditch were relatively simple. Two teams competed, with seven players on each team. There were three Chasers, responsible for catching the Quaffle, then evading the opponent's pursuit and trying their best to throw the ball into the opponent's hoops.
Besides the three Chasers, there were two Beaters, whose duty was to use bats to hit away the Bludgers that came to harass their own teammates. Of course, the rules allowed Beaters to hit Bludgers toward the opponent's players.
Gryffindor's two Beaters were the Weasley twins.
The remaining players were one Keeper and one Seeker. The Keeper was similar to a football goalkeeper, responsible for guarding their own hoops and preventing the opponent from scoring. The Seeker's main duty was to find and catch the Golden Snitch.
And Harry was Gryffindor's Seeker, and also the youngest Seeker.
However, the protagonist Harry always seemed to carry a taunting aura against villains. Just when Malfoy was about to report to a professor that Harry, a first-year wizard, was playing with a broomstick, Harry instead "sincerely" thanked Malfoy.
Yes, the broomstick in Harry's hands was the Nimbus 2000 given by Professor McGonagall. If Malfoy hadn't snatched Neville's Remembrall, Harry wouldn't have shown his flying talent. Thus, he wouldn't have made it onto the Quidditch team.
On the eve of Halloween, during a Charms class, after Professor Flitwick explained the techniques of the Levitation Charm to the young wizards, Hermione and Ron had a big argument.
Clearly, Hermione had bluntly pointed out Ron's mistakes in pronouncing the spell, while Ron felt Hermione was meddling too much. So, conflict was inevitable.
Of course, all this had nothing to do with Aisen. After mastering the Undetectable Extension Charm, Aisen planned to implement his own idea, which was to make a storage ring.
Of course, calling it a storage ring was just customising a ring with partial hollowing, then using the Undetectable Extension Charm to expand the space in the hollow part to achieve the purpose.
...
"Boss, can you customize rings here?" Looking at the old man with a thick beard in front of him, Aisen asked.
Yes, Aisen had changed out of his wizard robes and come to a Muggle jewellery processing factory. For Aisen, rings made with precision machining by ordinary people, using alloys, better suited his aesthetic.
"Yes, so what kind of ring do you want to customize?" The old man began asking about Aisen's requirements.
"A ring like this, with this part inside being hollow, made from titanium alloy. Can you do it?" Aisen pulled out a page from his pocket with a drawing of the ring style. In fact, the ring Aisen wanted to customize wasn't complicated; it just had some requirements for the material and the hollow part.
"No problem. 100 pounds deposit, come pick it up tomorrow." The old man nodded after looking at the sample.
The next day, after getting the ring, Aisen stopped by a store and bought a deck of playing cards. Then he returned to Hogwarts Castle.
Back in the faculty dormitory, Aisen first used a very overpowered spell—Geminio. He directly duplicated the ring dozens of times. Then, he began making the storage rings.
Since he had prior experience casting the Undetectable Extension Charm on a suitcase, casting it on the ring this time was very easy. After consecutively making five storage rings, Aisen stopped. He reached out and picked up one of the rings, and a pop-up frame appeared in front of Aisen.
[Discovered extraordinary characteristic—Fine-grade storage space characteristic]
Consume one portion of miracle characteristic to replicate?
With a thought, Aisen temporarily chose not to consume the miracle characteristic to replicate the ring's property, and the pop-up disappeared. After putting the ring on the middle finger of his right hand, Aisen could feel that the hollow part of the ring was roughly the size of a room.
Then, Aisen put the extra duplicated rings into one storage ring, and put all his books and manuscripts into another storage ring, then stored these two storage rings inside the one on his middle finger. Of course, his wand was also placed in the storage ring on his middle finger.
As for nesting storage rings inside each other, this trick worked. This meant that carrying things with him in the future would no longer be a problem for Aisen.
Next, Aisen began frantically using the Duplication Charm on the deck of playing cards he bought, only stopping after the duplicated cards filled two storage rings.
Then, Aisen put these two rings filled with playing cards on the ring fingers of both hands. As for why Aisen did this, it stemmed from one of his ideas.
Aisen wanted to use playing cards for combat. Of course, he wasn't a gambling addict who could fight enemies with playing cards. His main purpose was to use these cards for transfiguration in battle.
Through Transfiguration, whether turning a card into a human-sized stone slab or a human-sized alloy steel plate, it would undoubtedly be an excellent means to resist curses. Of course, for attack, he could also turn these cards into sharp attacking means.
If Aisen's idea was correct, then when facing enemies, he could casually throw cards from the storage rings. Because for him, every card thrown could turn into a prop to block or kill the enemy.
After finishing, Aisen went to the Room of Requirement.
The cards continuously appeared in Aisen's hands, then rapidly flew toward the targets while transforming into sharp objects, thick and large stone slabs, metal chains, and so on.
During the practice of Transfiguration combat simulation, Aisen also tried tactics for fighting multiple enemies at once. It sounded complicated, but for Aisen, it was very simple: just throwing several playing cards at the same time for transfigured attacks.
For defense, not to mention being able to cast a powerful shield charm on himself anytime, he could also directly turn cards into alloy shields to block in front of him.
After some practice, Aisen had mastered all the tactics he could think of very proficiently. He was very satisfied with his strength. He was confident that with this tactic, he could block most wizards, and even defeat or kill most wizards.
Although Aisen still wasn't sure if he could beat Voldemort, he felt that his card transfiguration tactic could at least handle the opponent's curses without issue; moreover, even facing Voldemort's Killing Curse, Aisen was confident that with his neural reaction speed, he could respond. Whether dodging or using Transfiguration to create obstacles to block, he could do it.
However, despite having this realisation, Aisen still looked forward to joining the Duelling Club for real combat. Unfortunately, he would have to wait a while longer.
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