When Noah and Hagrid arrived at the garden in front of the area where the hut was located, Noah managed to see what had happened again.
Noah could see that the plants they had spent three hours fixing yesterday, removing from their places and replanting, had once again become a mess, rotting away.
The young man was, of course, astonished, but more than astonishment, he was filled with great curiosity.
It would be accurate to say he didn't know what was going on. He could only sense that something unclean was present in the area. It was an unsettling feeling.
The fact that every single plant had rotted, even giving off an unbelievably disgusting smell, intrigued him just as much as it had intrigued Hagrid.
Although Hagrid was more deeply saddened than intrigued. This gentle giant was, of course, saddened as always by the withering away of the plants' lives.
Noah wandered among the plants for a while, trying to understand what had happened. Then he took a few small jars from the bag at his waist and collected samples from several plants.
He wanted to examine these samples with Professor Sprout. He was as certain as his name that a woman as talented as her would have one or more suggestions and clues, if not an answer.
After gathering the samples and putting them in his bag, the young man got up from where he was sitting and said, "Don't worry, I'll get to the bottom of this, Hagrid," and squeezed the gentle giant's hand.
Hagrid wiped the tears from his eyes and simply shook his head.
Noah planned to bring these samples to Professor Sprout tomorrow, at the weekend, when classes were a little lighter, so he went back into the castle and had his lunch.
He was sure someone else would feed Fluffy, so he wanted to focus on his own work.
Therefore, he went to the alchemy room in the middle of his tower to continue his studies.
Here, he was working on an experiment he hadn't told Professor Dumbledore, Snape, who taught him alchemy, or McGonagall, who often supervised him, about.
Noah had encountered many insane situations in the past that had left him wounded. After all, he had agreed to work as a spy since he was ten years old, like a madman. Being a metamorphmagus, spying had been quite easy for him.
Still, these wounds healed slowly.
Simply put, he was immortal; he belonged to a race that could live for thousands of years without any trouble as long as they did not fight, and could not die unless they wanted to.
Nevertheless, the wounds he sustained in battle healed at an unimaginably slow rate, just like those of other members of his race. This was perhaps his race's greatest weakness.
Even the most potent healing potions had almost no effect on him, so Noah refused to stand idly by. For nearly a year, he had been constantly stockpiling and using the highest quality ingredients he could find.
He collaborated with dozens of different merchants to source materials from South America, China, Korea, and even the frozen regions of Russia, managing to do so discreetly with each one.
The sole reason for this was to avoid losing his position in the wars he entered due to injury, to prevent his power from diminishing, and to remain one step closer to immortality even while fighting.
Thus, his only weakness would be eliminated.
Perhaps it was a slightly selfish thought, and even seeing himself as close to perfect could be considered a slightly narcissistic thought. After all, every wizard, from the kindest to the darkest, has wanted to live a few minutes longer.
Noah, on the other hand, was immortal even if he did absolutely nothing. Yet he chose to fight instead. Simply because he had the thought of everyone's well-being in his mind, the result was not wanting others to experience what he had experienced.
That's why such a potion had to exist.
Noah specifically used incredibly valuable ingredients like Phoenix Tears, Feathers, and Dragon Tears, trying to create a specific formula.
He did not neglect to use even a drop of his own blood in the formula.
After all, his blood was so valuable that it could make even the most powerful wizard kneel before him and beg, and Noah was the last person in the world who possessed this blood.
So it wasn't difficult to understand its importance.
Still, nothing worked.
No matter what formula the young man wrote, no matter how he used the ingredients, no matter how small or large a piece of his blood he poured in, nothing changed.
He ground the ingredients and mixed them before adding them to the cauldron. Sometimes he cut the ingredients and waited for them to dissolve in the water.
Yet, absolutely NOTHING changed.
It was driving him mad.
He wouldn't sleep today. It was a little past noon; it could be said it was around two in the afternoon. With the materials he had stockpiled, he had enough to try perhaps three hundred and fifty different recipes and formulas.
Starting today, he would not sleep until these materials were exhausted, and if necessary, he would pass out in this alchemy room.
He had locked the door to the room and even sealed it with his magic. In short, he did not want anyone, absolutely anyone, to disturb him.
With that, he finally began the process.
The first recipe failed within a short time. The black smoke rising from the failed recipe had escaped through the only window in the room.
Then he had created the second recipe.
It had failed.
He had made the next one.
It had failed again.
Again and again, without a moment's rest, without even a minute to sit down, he kept trying the recipes for hours on end, but each time he failed.
He was so close. He was so, so close to achieving something... yet every time he thought he had it, it slipped through his fingers.
The healing potion that was supposed to fix it seemed like it shouldn't even exist; it felt as if the world itself, the magic itself, was blocking it.
Still, Noah had to succeed.
"DAMN IT!" Noah shouted. After a non-stop nine-hour trial, the room was filled with parchments of different colours, each covered in writing.
Each one was a newly created, failed formula.
"DAMN IT!" he shouted again, throwing the empty bottles on the table with his hands and breaking them in a moment of involuntary anger.
However, he took a deep breath, took his wand out of his robe's inner pocket and said, "Reparo."
With that, each broken glass bottle reassembled itself and returned to its place on the table.
Noah felt very, very tired, but since it was the beginning of the academic year, there was no one around to fully disturb him. So this could be the best opportunity he could seize.
After calming himself for a while, the young man straightened up, went to the cauldron, removed the liquid inside with magic, cleaned the cauldron, and then resumed the process.
Getting a little closer to success, he noted every moment when the timing sequences were precise or certain. That's why he wanted to proceed by trial and error this time.
He did so, yet nothing would change.
The young man continued in this manner, not leaving the room for not just one week, but two full weeks.
However, once all the materials in his possession were exhausted, he was able to prepare to leave the room.
He burned every failed liquid with fire, then filed away the notes for each failed recipe before placing them inside his magical bag.