Tucked away, in an unused room in the dungeons, Hermione was conducting her enchanting experiments whilst Angitia kept watch in the hallways, able to alert her through their familiar bond.

  ‘Klink’

  Another failure. This was proving to be quiet the source of frustration. She had taken the necessary steps to make the item’s enchantment hold, that had been retively easy, but doing so and making it drain her magic to be rechargeable and act as a battery was proving impossible with her limited knowledge on the matter.

  She had taken gemstones and mixed a primer with crushed gemstones to allow the rune etching to retain a crystalline structure so that the magic wouldn’t need to convert from one material to another, this was to make the magic flow better from her reading of Pernelle’s notes and Angitia confirmed she could taste that the magic didn’t change much by adding this step, but the runic process to drain, store and detect was proving to be too complex for the gem to retain it’s structural integrity as if too many functions were in effect.

  One of the main issues she had found through her trials, was that the runic arrays she had made would work on their own, the ‘Core Sigil’ which defined it’s primary function seemed to be the main issue, when you defined it’s function, that made adding additional functions to the gem create a conflict, somewhat simir to programming in computers, but this wasn’t a discipline she was familiar with in her past life. The way to bypass was to add containment runes, but containment wasn’t perfect and the gems would still bleed some power leaving the runes in a semi-activated state, which was both good and bad as it would allow a constant detection array in effect if it was within the core function.

  The core function however was to drain magic from it’s user to act as a battery, but to reverse the flow of the magic pull so that she could recall the magic caused the thing to shatter and the magic within became untethered and wild magic, not to mention the gem wasn’t reusable, making this very expensive to use constantly.

  She retried the process step by step to see where the magic in the gem started being votile, testing it at each stage, just as she got to the stage where she could add the containment runes she turned to grab her crushed gemstones when she slipped off her chair jarring her back and she braced herself against the table.

  She felt a hot pain in her left hand causing her to cry out sharply in pain.

  “Hermione, are you ok~s” Angitia asked as she slithered back into the room.

  Hermione winced, clutching her left hand and inspecting the deep cut running across her palm. Blood welled up quickly, dripping onto the table and—unintentionally—onto the shattered gem. Her sharp intake of breath echoed in the small room as she watched, wide-eyed, as the gem pulsed faintly, absorbing the blood like a sponge. The shards around it began to shimmer, a faint red glow threading through the fractures.

  “I-I’m fine” she stammered, eyes still locked on the gem as the light flickered and steadied. The sharp sting of her cut faded into the background of her thoughts.

  Angitia slithered closer, her body coiling protectively around Hermione's chair. Her tongue flicked, tasting the air. "That is... different. The magic tastes sharper now, more focused. What did you do?"

  Hermione swallowed hard, wiping her bloodied hand on her robe before grabbing a clean cloth to staunch the flow. "I didn’t do anything—at least, not on purpose. I cut myself on the gem before applying the stabilising runes and agent." She gestured toward the glowing fragments, her voice trailing off.

  Angitia tilted her head, her golden eyes narrowing. "Blood binds, blood is what contains our magic, that’s how I get mine to recharge, when I consume prey, it doesn’t work so well with Eggs, but from live prey.”

  Hermione considered this, blood magic was banned in Britain and only old family heirlooms were allowed due to the Grandfather Laws making them legal to own, but not make. She’d read about blood magic in the library, as limited as it was, expining about how blood can be used to bind people, whilst it couldn’t control people as such, it did allow you to track them as long as you had a vessel with their blood and magic in it. This she had surmised was how Dumbledore kept track of Harry, along with the powerful enchantment made by his mothers blood to protect him from Voldemort.

  Without knowing more about the magic and it’s effects it was dangerous she surmised to continue with this, but she now had a working battery that drained magic. She observed that the gem instead of pulling in all magic around it, it now only pulled on Hermione’s Magic. She considered the reasons why this made the gem more stable, was the injection of foreign magics with different signatures and wavelengths causing the instability in the gem, and by tying it to her blood it now nonly pulled from 1 source where there was no conflicts or conversion needed? Interesting theory, but hard to test without cutting herself and she wasn’t agreeable to that.

  Then she considered, was it possible to make a battery that targeted specific magic? There must be something like that as she had seen Draco’s ring react to a hex sent at him by a Ravencw only the other week, was it then not possible to targeted the darkest of spells? Could you make the gems attempt to drain those magics to charge itself and weaken the spells effects?

  From the magical theory she had looked into, whilst a Protego Maxima wouldn’t block a Crucio, it did weaken it, so was it just the shield wasn’t tied into the right wavelength? You can’t create an opposite sound wave to block another, instead you use the same frequency but opposite phase, this cancelled out sound, was that how shield spells worked? Protego was a general use spell to block the majority of spells, so it would make sense it had holes in it that unforgivable would be allowed to bypass. Interesting theory, and this supported her earlier considerations with the Basilisk Stare, but to test this theory would require someone she trusted to shoot Crucio at her, and then the others, a daunting prospect.

  “Hide the gem, someone is coming.” Angitia hissed.

  Hermione's heart skipped a beat as Angitia's warning hiss echoed in her mind. Acting quickly, she scooped up the glowing gem and its fractured shards, wrapping them in a scrap of cloth before shoving them into her bag. The bloodied cloth she had used earlier to staunch her wound was hastily hidden under a stack of notes. With a flick of her wand, she doused the ntern, plunging the room into the dim light of its enchanted sconces.

  The door creaked open, and Professor Snape stepped into the room, his dark robes billowing like a shadow come to life. His expression was as impassive as ever, but the sharp glint in his eyes told Hermione he was already taking in every detail of the scene.