“Study of ancient runes is useless,” everyone had told him. “It’s such a stupid elective, why don’t you go for transfiguration instead, maybe you’d get to be a good animagus,” his father had said, “it’s not like you can do anything with it now, whatever was there to be discovered, has been translated by many others before you, seriously Pollux, it’s like you love wasting everyone’s time.”
Everyone always had such a delightful comment about his choice of elective, but what people never figured was that the reason for it was tightly bound to the dark arts books hidden in the library and dusty stores in Knockturn Alley.
He quickly read through the book encrypted in some form of 17th century runes, most of the pages were warnings and thoughts from the wizard who had written it, only by the book’s last pages did he get to what he was after.
“Resurrection spell,” his finger traced the encrypted title as he read it out loud.
“There is also the potion, you know?” Junjie’s voice had chimed from behind him, a tone of boredom ever present in his words.
“I have no use for a potion that does so much of a mess, requires a lot of shit only to end up with a disfigured nonsense. I mean, did you ever look at photos of whats-his-face back in the 90′s? Bloke had no bloody nose, it was horrid to look at.”
“I’m pretty sure his nose wasn’t the worst about Tom Riddle, but you do you.”
Pollux heard some scuffling behind him, indication that Junjie had opted to sit down, probably on a pile of snow that still covered the floor that out in the forest.
They’d been there for a few hours now, Pollux sitting on a log going through his book while Rigby, his poor toad, lied dead on a cleared spot on the floor.
“What if this fails?” Junjie spoke again.
The spell wasn’t terribly hard to perform. Most warnings about it had focused on how it would take more, the bigger the object of the resurrection was - partly it had made Pollux ever so happy about his choice of pet - and it would only require a sacrifice, blood of a powerful wizard, and a fitting wand.
One could argue that Pollux considering himself to be a powerful wizard at such a young age was a far stretch, but this is Pollux we’re talking about, thus, it was admittedly the most normal thing to happen.
Pollux eyed the pixie inside the jar that was sitting not far from his own left foot, the small creature anxiously darting around the jar, knocking itself against the glass. It would make a fine sacrifice.
He heard Junjie sigh once more behind him, which in return, made him turn around on the verge of losing his patience. “Look dude, nothing bad’s gonna happen. The worst case scenario is this little thing here die alongside Rigby who’s already dead,” he snapped.
Junjie frowned, fumbling anxiously with the ring on his index finger. “I dunno.. Don’t you find it odd that this spell exists and yet nobody uses it? I’m sure that if it was infallible, the Ministry would be all up on it to bring back powerful figures to life.”
“Maybe nobody ever had the balls to sacrifice other beings,” Pollux shrugged, “maybe they never cared to see if it worked because of the state of old lord Voldy’s mug.” He then pulled out his wand. “Maybe nobody was ever strong enough to do any of this.”
In a brief moment he extended his hand and mumbled a small hex before quickly tracing the tip of his wand across his palm, opening a big gash that promptly began dripping blood all over Ribgy’s body (and even Pollux could admit the whole process was quite nasty.)
Then, he reached for the jar and opened the lid, not giving the small pixie much time to fly out and away from it before casting the killing curse upon it, almost scoffing when the thing fell dead with a thump on the snow.
He could pretty much feel Junjie’s judgmental stare behind him, but he didn’t care, he could feel his own wand almost trembling with power in his palm.
Before he got too sidetracked - and because his palm was hurting quite the amount - he turned his wand back to the toad and mumbled the words written in the book.
A gust of wind passed by them shortly after, colder than the snow they were surrounded by, and surely, a few seconds after, Ribgy’s croak was heard. Pollux’s eyes widened as he watched the small frog suddenly jump onto its four legs, croaking once again.
“It worked!” he gasped, turning to Junjie who seemed to be equally amazed and terrified - to hell with his lack of enthusiasm. “I can’t believe it bloody worked!” Pollux put away his wand before crouching down and extending his healthy palm to Rigby so that the frog could hop onto it. “Sorry for all the trouble old pal, no hard feelings.”
The toad croaked in response... or just croaked because it was a toad.. Regardless, it had brought a smile to Pollux’s face, his pet was alive and in one piece.
“You think he’ll stay alive for too long?” Junjie asked as he stood back up to his feet. Pollux watched his friend step closer to his hand and reach out to try and touch the toad who simply jumped out of his reach the moment Junjie’s fingers wrapped around it, almost like it was some sort of wet soap and Junjie’s fingers were all buttered up.
How peculiar, Pollux thought with a chuckle. “I hope he does,” was the only thing he remembered to say.
Nevertheless, apprehension was marked all over the Slytherin’s features and it made Pollux suddenly stop on his tracks with a conundrum at hands: what would be best, to have people aware of his great achievement? Or to keep it to himself for self-protection?
Without so much as a second thought, Pollux grabbed his wand with his wounded hand and brought it up to Junjie’s temple. “No hard feelings mate... Obliviate.”
theartofmadeline
blakekathryn
