LIGHTNOVELONLINE 51. Creative minds
"How about a bracelet?" "Can you make one?" "Or maybe two?" The twins asked, standing on either side of Danil and watching his work.
"I don't know, but I can try." He replied, taking out a piece of iron ore from his bag.
After a memorable first dinner among his peers, Danil's small circle of friends decided that they should spend Sunday morning together and away from the Main Hall. So, having gathered in a small group, they quickly discussed everything and were now in the monster boy's apartment.
Each of them knew that breakfast would be quite noisy today. And if not from the questions of other students about Danil's life, then from the screams of howlers that would come with the morning mail.
They valued their hearing much more than breakfast in the company of the entire population of the castle.
Now all his friends from the Divination Club, the Weasley twins and of course, Luna, were here. And in their conversation, Danil quite accidentally dropped the fact that he could create anything, if only he had the materials. His statement was received with skepticism and now each of the teenagers tried to come up with something that Danil could not do on his crafting table.
"Done!" He said, picking up a shiny iron forearm bracelet from the table and showing it to the audience.
The twins bent down, practically pressing their noses into the metal, and began to examine every detail of the bracelet. And he didn’t have that many of them.
"It looks plain." Lavender said, the girl settled down on the couch next to the fireplace and had no intention of moving from there anytime soon. "Usually, these bracelets are a work of art, but here it's just polished metal. It's kind of boring."
Danil shrugged in response. "Maybe so, but for me such bracelets are, first of all, a piece of armor. Sorry, that's how the brain sets priorities." He said without even a hint of guilt in his eyes.
"Luna did it better." George said, looking at the blonde who used the table when everyone turned away.
In her hands lay an iron bracelet, only it was very different from the one that Danil made. First, her bracelet had elegant engravings that twisted and turned into images of unknown animals. It looked more like the work of art Lavender was talking about.
Secondly, her bracelet was much smaller and lighter, although it was made according to the same recipe and from the same materials as Danil's bracelet. How that worked, they had no idea, but Danil suspected that the crafting table collected information from the user's mind.
Jamie suggested that the table was somehow in contact with the information field that surrounded the entire planet and connected every life together. It was strange to hear that in the magical world the information field of the planet was perceived as something real and even sometimes tangible, and not as the delirium of another enlightened – stoned – spiritual practitioner.
There was a reason why the two of them were the ones taking orders from everyone else and making things. No one except Danil and Luna could use the crafting table, much to the frustration and confusion of the group of friends.
As a result, after several tens of minutes of discussion and a couple of crazy theories, it was concluded that among them only Luna had a broad enough view of magic, a suitable young age to learn how to use such an unusual artifact. In Danil's case, his curse worked as a conductor of power. Of course, all this was just a theory and no one was going to steal people to test it.
"Really?" Luna asked, looking at the twins with her ever-wide eyes. "But I think that I went too far with the engravings. A crumple-horned snorkack can't stand so calmly next to a griffin. They would've already started fighting." The girl said with confidence, looking at the design on her bracelet. "It would be worth making two bracelets to make it more comfortable for them." The girl said thoughtfully and turned back to the table.
And Danil could only hope that she wouldn't accidentally create something particularly sharp in her experiments.
"Your working stations are strange." Parvati said. "A table that instantly creates inferior artifacts; a furnace that melts metals into perfect pieces one kilogram at a time. Where did you even get them from?"
"I made the crafting table with Hagrid's help. Then I made the furnace using the table, nothing too hard." Danil answered, taking out another crafting table from his bag, which suddenly increased in size in his hands and became an exact copy of its predecessor.
"... Just how many of these things are inside your bag?" Gabriel muttered quietly in shock, but the monster boy heard him anyway.
"Twelve, I think? I decided to immediately make to stock up, not to suffer later. What if my axe breaks on a hike, and there's nothing to replace it with?"
"What axe?" Jamie asked with interest.
"This one." He took out a two-meter axe from his backpack under the dumbfounded looks of his friends. Well, Luna already knew about his little weapon collection, but she always looked a little surprised anyway.
Jamie jumped up from Gabriel's lap. "Okay, now I want to go through your bag! How many secrets do you have hiding in there?"
Remembering the huge number of human skulls lying at the bottom of his backpack and collecting dust until the right moment, Danil chuckled.
"Enough not to share them. I don't need to get kicked out of school for the crap I collect."
Jamie, of course, started to pout and landed back in Gabriel's lap, but she accepted his words as the truth.
Later that day, at a meeting of the Hogwarts Board of Governors, an important issue was being discussed.
"Dumbledore, what were you thinking when you let him onto the school grounds?" Augustine Longbottom asked dryly, sitting in the seat of the head of the board of trustees.
"That one of my potential students' needs help. The boy had to be pulled out of an Acromantula colony." The old man answered without even twitching his eyebrow.
"Uh-huh. And you would tell us about your new student, when, may I ask?" Parkinson sneered. "I have an inkling that the… boy would be kept as a secret for a long time. If we can't trust you to speak to the Board on these matters, then why are you still holding your place as a Headmaster?"
Someone snorted. Parkinson's threats were as empty as his coffers. The bastard just didn't want to be seen as "weak," and the definition of the word in Parkinson's mind changed every other week.
"Have you thought about the fact that by your actions you could endanger all the other students at Hogwarts?" Lord Greengrass muttered dissatisfiedly. "Even if this kid is thrice cursed and not guilty of his actions, this doesn't justify the fact that you didn't notify the Board of his appearance. But more important, why didn't you even inform the Unspeakables about him?! They could have helped him."
This time Dumbledore's eyebrow rose in great doubt. "Unspeakables? Seymour, don't you think you should try a little better to hide your desire to get another lab rat for your department?" The director asked mockingly.
Seymour only huffed in response, but didn't deny anything.
Most people knew that the Greengrass family had close ties to the Department of Mysteries. Of course, no one could say exactly what positions they occupied in the ranks of Unspeakables, but the connection could be found if one knew where to look.
"We can't allow him to stay on school grounds." Amos Diggory said in a grave tone. "He will not be able to coexist with other students and will only continue to be a danger to everyone around him."
Several people immediately squinted at the Head of the Diggory House. Of course, the fact that he was saying the right things went against the fact that it was about a boy who was a victim of circumstances.
"Don't even start." Lord Brown frowned. "The only recorded incident of aggression on the part of Mister Khromov could have been prevented if Messer's Potter, Weasley and Miss Granger had not been present in the closed part of the castle. And the dinner after the incident was held without a hitch, even with the boy's presence. He's responsible enough to learn here."
It was safe to say that the boy was trying to adhere to all the security measures that the situation imposed on him.
“No. I can't allow that." Diggory repeated, stubbornly sticking to his point of view. "No matter how much sense of responsibility there is in the boy and no matter what security measures he adheres to, just one slip is enough for the irreversible to happen."
This time, someone openly laughed, attracting everyone's attention and causing a wave of tension among those present. From the portrait that hung on the wall of the meeting room, Phineas Nigelius Black, the former Headmaster of Hogwarts school, laughed openly.
"Mister Black, do you have something to say?" Dumbledore asked with a mischievous note in his voice.
"Oh-hahaha! Yes! And a lot of things!" The rather young-looking man who was sitting in the painting forced himself to calm down and contemptuously cast a glance at Diggory. "And especially to you. Do you think that the presence of the cursed child here will be dangerous for others?" Seeing that he opened his mouth; Phineas waved it away. "Be silent, the question was rhetorical. Better answer me this: how many accidents have happened in the Potions room over the past year?"
Diggory frowned and his eyes lost focus for a moment. "Thirteen cases with minor injuries, but three students were sent to Madam Pomfrey for recovery with severe injuries."
"Well, at least you read the reports, thank Merlin." Phineas sighed. "There are also many who visit the hospital wing after every Quidditch game. Also, quite a large number of students have been in mortal danger for various reasons over the past few years. Do you feel how safe the students are?"
"This is completely different!" Diggory almost burst out screaming, but quickly calmed down his feelings. "I'm worried that a lot of students might get hurt-"
"When I was still alive," Phineas continued, as if no one else was trying to speak, "during my studies at Hogwarts, something terrible happened. During a transfiguration lesson, one student pushed the arm of another and a spell to transform an animal into a goblet flew into the head of a girl who was sitting in front. Only half of her head transformed."
A couple of people turned green in the face, but no one wanted to interrupt the portrait.
"What I want to say by this, Diggory, is that the magical world is far from being safe. So even if you throw the boy out of the castle, you won't change anything much. You'll only make an enemy." Spitting at his feet with contempt, Phineas rose from his chair and walked somewhere beyond the frame of his portrait.
Diggory had to be calmed down by Brown, who was sitting next to him. But after a couple of minutes everyone went back on track and again began discussing Danil's fate. And no matter how Brown tried to twist himself in order to leave the boy at school, the future was looking grim.
Dumbledore did nothing but look at this circus from the side and grinned into his beard. In the inner pocket of his robe lay a weighty argument with which he could quite calmly put an end to any wrangling of the Board. It was just a little something they found in the Rowena Ravenclaw's Library.