The boys woke up startled by the noise, looking around fearfully and confused. Rigel simply ignored them, instead standing up with a quick movement, putting the book back in his small bag, and glancing towards the port.
"Well, lads, it's time to go, our ship is waiting for us." Rigel said, smiling.
The boys, tired, sleepy, and frightened, looked at him with evident confusion.
Rigel paid them no attention and began walking towards the port, using his diminutive figure to navigate the alleyways. The five exchanged glances for a moment before quickly jumping up to follow him.
The six boys passed by the houses as the sound of cannons grew louder, the shouts of civilians and pirates who had landed taking the place of the night's tranquility.
The five boys behind Rigel were already confused and scared, but seeing that Rigel showed no signs of stopping, they continued to advance.
[A/N: Dude, I shouldn't have chosen the name Rigel, every now and then I realize I wrote Ringo instead of Rigel. Note to myself and anyone interested: Give your protagonists really different names.]
In the night sky, Rigel drew ever closer to the port, and by then there was nowhere to hide, pirates, sailors, and civilians were running everywhere, the sound of swords, gunfire, and screams turning everything into a disorienting cacophony.
Rigel wasn't feeling much better, his pale face was already red. It was the first time he'd found himself in this kind of situation. He tightened his grip on the wand, his eyes trying to take in everything around him.
Passing through an alley, two pirates were stabbing a soldier with their swords. They noticed the boys as soon as they saw them, but they just snorted before turning and running away.
Rigel was still paralyzed in his place, confused and scared, but he soon came to a conclusion: they looked like a bunch of street urchins, five boys with pieces of rusty iron as 'weapons' and another with a wooden stick.
With no value beyond killing, most pirates would ignore them, after all, most of them had been in the same position as those boys.
Rigel felt the cold sweat on his back, letting out a tired sigh. He felt he couldn't go on like this, reaching into his bag, he pulled out a small vial of potion, opened it, and drank.
The effect of this potion is quite simple: liquid courage.
Drinking this practically transforms a timid Hufflepuff into an idiotic Gryffindor with one gulp. The effect of this vial only lasts half an hour, but given his current situation, without it he might not even make it to the port before freezing again and getting a bullet in the head.
He wasn't afraid of seeing dead people, but he was afraid of dying, even knowing that he wouldn't actually die in this world, his brain couldn't keep up with that line of reasoning.
Hearing the sound of an explosion not far away, he swallowed the bottle whole.
Fortunately, the potions in Harry Potter have an almost immediate effect.
A moment later, before the astonished eyes of the 5 boys, Rigel's posture changed completely.
His eyes drifted and trembled, stopping abruptly.
Instead, there seemed to be a fire inside him, for a moment Rigel wanted to turn around and run to fight the pirates.
Just for his occlumency to work enough to calm him down a little, his lips trembled, he finally wondered why this potion was so cheap.
The salesman wasn't exaggerating when he said: "Idiot Gryffindor".
Taking a deep breath, he focused his Occlumency to maintain his courage, but to lose his recklessness, the truth is, it wasn't easy.
Rigel's Occlumency cannot be described as perfect, at most, he would be "good enough." Although it is a type of magic, Occlumency is not a spell to be cast, but takes a long time to learn, using focus and calmness as its foundation.
For Rigel, who started at age 5, it could only be considered acceptable, he wasn't really very good at clearing his mind, but with years of practice, he could do it with ease.
Even so, Occlumency requires constant calmness, situations like the current one, where he felt fear, caused his Occlumency to fail horribly. Even now, he felt the impulses caused by the potion fighting against his calm, but the positive side was that he wasn't trying to protect his mind, but only to control his recklessness, so it served its purpose.
Thus, before the boys' astonished eyes, Rigel began to lead again, wherever he went, if someone tried to stop him, a spell was all he needed.
He chose the simple Depulso.
Rigel also noticed something, his magic seemed to respond much better to him now. Perhaps this courage potion had more positive aspects than expected, unfortunately, he only bought three of them.