Chapter 319
When Felix extended the invitation to Charlie, the adventurous part of Charlie’s personality kicked in, and he happily accepted the offer almost without much thought.
“You’re more shameless than Norbert, you know that?” Charlie reached out his rough hand and patted the spikes on the Hungarian horntail’s head, and the dragon rolled its eyes, ignoring his accusation.
Charlie began to take over Felix’s work, brushing the sauce up in layers, “Judging from my experience, brushing it in one direction-”
“Will it be more flavourful?” Felix asked.
“No, it will look better.” Charlie laughed, “It’s like melted amber. Well-”
The two cut out a tenth of the roast, and the rest all went into the Hungarian horntail’s belly, “Accio fruit wine from Charlie’s tent!” Charlie shouted, and two jugs flew over like cannonballs as he told Felix, “We make our own wine from local fruit that you can’t get anywhere else.”
Felix narrated some interesting stories from school, especially when mentioning Hagrid and Ron, Charlie opened up more and let out a hearty laugh from time to time, he said with great interest, “I was close to Hagrid when I was in school because we were both interested in dragons, he always said he wanted to raise a dragon, and he ended up doing it the first year after I left.”
“The Norbert you just mentioned?”
” Well, a Norwegian Ridgeback that’s less than three years old, which we’ve just released back into the wild.” Charlie grinned, “These dragons grow fastest in their first few months of life, and the hatchlings develop their fire-breathing abilities relatively early, so Hagrid quickly realized that keeping it was a tricky mess, so he asked me to take Norbert with me.”
“Norbert and we got acquainted, he often came to beg for food, after eating he will run away.” Charlie said, “We wondered if it would bring its own children with it later.”
“It also often steals the brandy from the camp, which is the captain’s favourite, the captain will speak like he’s reluctant, but in fact, he secretly relaxes the security, you know we have an alarm.”
Felix said, “Brandy? It wouldn’t be Hagrid–”
“That’s right, Hagrid is the bad example.” Charlie chuckled softly, “I guess he read some book with a biased recipe and thought brandy would increase its fire-breathing ability.”
…
Felix spent two more days at the Dragon Reserve, and on the day of his departure, he finally met the camp’s particularly famous Norwegian Ridgeback dragon, Norbert, which is only 12 or 13 foot tall and looks much smaller compared to the adult dragon.
The Norwegian Ridgeback is somewhat similar to the Hungarian Horntail as both have lizard-like bodies with broad wings, and their tails are sharp. The young dragon in front of him, named Norbert, has a white snout, bulging orange eyes, and black, spiky wings that flap constantly.
The camp prepared a shee barrel of brandy for it, and the dark brown-skinned captain watched with a pained expression as Norbert drank up the brandy, then burped loudly and spewed out a few sparkling sparks.
Then Norbert grunted twice cheerfully towards the crowd, grabbed the sheep, and flew away.
“Crafty fellow.” The middle-aged captain muttered.
Felix also duly offered his farewell, as he directly used apparition, in the following week, he focused on spending some time to visit some friends, some of them were scheduled in advance, such as the Longbottoms, and some were without a formal appointment, such as Newt Scamander.
When he returned from Newt’s house, Felix carried an extra little one, a Niffler cub.
Newt had planned to release these magical creatures on a regular basis, and at the time Felix came over, it just so happened that among the creatures Newt was going to release, there were those three Niffler he had seen when he was at the Ministry of Magic, namely Valen, Sal, and Thorpe.
“I suggest you pick just one, their destructive power will multiply with their numbers.” Newt said.
“Just Valen, I remember her scolding me.” Felix said.
Niffler, which was excitedly grabbing the shiny gold coins from its two brothers with its butt facing him, froze in place when she heard Felix’s words.
Newt and Felix seemed to hear the sound of necks rattling and turning, and Niffler Valen looked at them with an innocent face.
“Mr. Hap …”
“I’m kidding, I’ll take good care of her.”
Newt shook his head and watched as Felix tricking the Niffler away with a pearl necklace that he had morphed from a quill, and he wondered if he had made the right choice.
Still, he took out a silver pocket watch and handed it to Felix: “You’ve seen it in the Ministry of Magic, it pops open gently when you turn it on, it’s about the size of a classroom, Valen will like it.”
…
At this time, Felix is reading in one of Nicolas Flamel’s secret hiding places, with Niffler Valen lying on her back on the carpet, her little tiny hand constantly scratching and tugging, trying to stuff the shiny rune in front of her into her pocket.
Almost a week passed, and he found a pattern to deal with this little fellow, casting firm enchantment around the house and then releasing the runes from the thinking room for her to play with.
He also produced a finely crafted dreamscape – a gold mountain of Galleon, stored in his Second Class Order of Merlin badge, now it’s one of the Niffler Valen’s treasures, the other treasure being a scrapped time-turner.
It was previously hidden in an ancient box, also found by Niffler Valen, and a note specifically left inside with instructions from Nicolas Flamel about its origins.
The completely damaged time-turner had been acquired by Nicolas Flamel three hundred years ago at great expense, and was said to have come from a stolen item seized by the British Ministry of Magic; its previous owner had used it incorrectly and ended up trapping herself in the time gap where no one could find her, causing her to be literally starved to death.
She wrote down what happened with her own blood, which was later discovered by the Ministry of Magic, and this time-turner was confiscated by the Ministry as well, only to be somehow passed around and be bought by Nicolas Flamel.
He conducted a lot of research on this time-turner and tried to repair it, but in the end, it did not succeed, only thick information about time left behind.
Felix tried repeatedly without being convinced and found that it was indeed damaged and was currently just an hourglass-like craft ornament, so it ended up as one of Niffler Valen’s collections.
Monday, July 16th.
The sky is cloudy and Felix is dressed in black formal wear, the emerald ring on his left hand and the Ring of the Ouroboros Snake on his right hand have been removed and placed in his pocket, while the Niffler has been tucked into a silver pocket watch and kept close to his body.
Today is the day of Sirius’ brother Regulus’ funeral, Felix tidied up properly and came out from his house.
The sky began to drizzle, Felix covered with a humanoid shield charm as he made his way to the funeral site, where a number of people had already arrived, also wearing black robes or formal wear, in the middle of a pile of adults, several small children stood out – red-haired Ron Weasley, black-haired Harry Potter, and platinum blonde hair Draco Malfoy.
He also saw a number of familiar faces, Tonks, Barty Crouch, the Malfoys, the Longbottoms, Neville’s grandmother, and so on.
There were also a number of people sitting together, and when Felix came over, they had an uneasy look on their faces.
Felix gave a smile as he saw the face of Lord Parkinson, who flushed with a purplish-red colour that seemed particularly looked odd on his face.
“All familiar faces.”
———-
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