In the days that followed, Fred and George kept dropping by to work on perfecting their line of Skiving Snackbox's first product—Ton-Tongue Toffee.
But Kael found the process way too boring, so he didn't join them and chose instead to stay in his room reading.
This totally baffled Fred and George, because they saw a bit of Percy in Kael.
But the two of them couldn't really complain.
No choice, who told Kael to be their landlord now, and an important partner as well? They could only do their invention research here without worrying about getting caught.
Of course, that didn't mean they stayed completely silent.
One time after being rejected, George drew out his voice, "Fred, I think it's time we order a batch of Filibuster Fireworks to celebrate Kael becoming Prefect in advance."
"Then we'll be celebrating for four years," Fred echoed in the same dramatic tone. "After all, you only get to be Prefect in fifth year at Hogwarts, and he's just in second year now."
"Right, there's a possibility it'll be six years," George raised his brow. "Don't forget Head Boy is still up for grabs."
"Yeah, exactly... Tsk, tsk, six years of Filibuster Fireworks, that's going to cost a fortune."
The two of them bantered back and forth, both their tone and expressions were identical to a certain Professor of Potions—anyone passing by would've thought Snape was standing right there in the doorway.
Kael didn't say anything either. He simply shot them a middle finger and went back to staring at his desk.
There sat a pile of parchment sheets, full of writing.
The content on those parchments was copied from the Restricted Area.
Kael remembered it was a book about Alchemy, titled "Magic Products: Change and Fusion."
He hadn't been super interested at first; after copying it, he put it aside and hadn't looked at it for ages.
But now things were different.
Helping the Weasley Brothers with Skiving Snackbox was really just a bit of fun after homework—what Kael truly wanted to understand was Soul Artifacts.
Kael flipped through the parchments, especially focusing on the section about fusing Magic into ordinary items; he read it very carefully.
After all, this was about the only stuff he could find that even remotely related to Soul Artifacts.
The connection was shaky, and Kael didn't know if Soul Artifacts had anything to do with Alchemy, but hey, learning more couldn't hurt.
Anyway, everything was about fusion, who knows—maybe inspiration would strike.
Soul and Magic were pretty far apart on the scale, but it wasn't impossible, right?
...
He hadn't thought much of it before, but when Kael really dove in, he realized the book's contents were extremely obscure.
To actually understand it, Kael ordered a stack of Alchemy books from Diagon Alley by owl, starting to teach himself from scratch.
No wonder people say Alchemy costs a fortune—even the most basic books were barely under ten Galleons. It was a rip-off to rival Lockhart, and Kael ended up sinking a huge pile of Galleons into this.
He kept at it for nearly a month.
One evening, a month later, Kael sat at his desk as usual, but this time, instead of reading, he took out a wand and tried to levitate a piece of Toffee in front of him.
Ottery St Catchpole was a Wizard Village, so using Magic here meant the Trace basically didn't work—the Ministry of Magic would rarely track him.
Just in case, though, Kael only pulled out his wand at night—after office hours for the Ministry, and when there were the most people out and about.
Besides, he wasn't using his own wand, but the Witch of Consumption's.
When he found it, he just slipped it into his cloak pocket, never handed it over to McGonagall or the Ministry of Magic folks.
Though a few Beaters did ask him about the wand, it felt more like going through the motions. Kael shrugged them off, said he hadn't seen it, and they left.
Maybe in their minds, the Forbidden Forest was huge—a lost wand seemed normal enough. Could've been snatched by some little animal, too.
In the end, the wand became Kael's trophy.
Only, it was pretty awkward to use—something was off, like eating noodles with a spoon.
Still, free stuff shouldn't be held to too-high standards.
Under Kael's control, the piece of Toffee started peeling apart, layer by layer. Five minutes later, the whole thing had become sheets of "candy paper," as thin as a cicada's wing.
The candy paper was insanely thin—if you looked closely, you'd see all sorts of different patterns etched into every sheet.
Kael took a bottle of pale blue Swelling Potion and waved the wand again.
Two drops of potion floated out, stretching and splitting in midair into countless fine, nearly invisible threads, matching up perfectly with the candy paper's patterns.
Right after, the candy paper gathered itself back together in the center, morphing again into a complete piece of Toffee.
This was Kael's prize for the month: change the form of materials, then fuse them together again.
Kinda like enchanting in a video game.
But instead of the usual Alchemy method of inlaying gem stones on weapons, Kael's way was to grind the gems up and melt them right into the weapon itself.
The complexity shot up exponentially—it's no wonder it was locked away in the Restricted Area.
Kael picked up the Toffee, holding it under the lamp for a closer look... It looked just like a regular piece of candy, no difference at all.
Breaking it open was fine too—seemed like a perfectly ordinary Toffee.
"Should I try this out on someone?" Kael muttered to himself.
This was his first time making something like this; he wasn't really confident it'd worked, so the best way was to find a test subject.
Kael started weighing up candidates for his potion trial.
Fred and George were a perfect fit—they'd love to try it—but Kael immediately ruled them out.
He didn't learn this to help the twins improve their products.
If they found out he could perfectly fuse Toffee with Swelling Potion, his entire summer would turn into their project lab.
Ron was a great candidate… Obedient, easy to trick, easy to coax, and handy when it came to shifting blame.
The Savior Potter, who enrolled this year, was also pretty good. He lived in his comfort zone, had no clue how twisted folks in the Magic Realm could be—perfect time to teach him a lesson. Shows Kael's thoughtfulness, honestly.
Both were great options—which one should he pick?
Kael couldn't quite decide.
...