Back in his bedroom-slash-laboratory, Iain carefully set Lily's skull on the desk and angled it toward the window.
"Aunt Lily, even if your soul isn't here yet, I'm appointing you captain of my personal guard. Your first duty is to keep an eye on Snape in case he tries to climb through the window and crack me over the head."
In the end, Iain still judged others by his own standards. He was worried Snape might go back and think through the lie he had fed him. After a round of aggressive mental conditioning, Iain turned around and set a pot on in the sitting room.
Not soup.
A potion.
The cauldron sat over the fire, flames licking the bottom while the liquid inside began to release tiny bubbles. Once again, he followed the proportions he had worked out through experiment and resumed brewing the Number Five Compound he had been obsessing over.
The liquid in the pot shifted from clear to pale blue, then from pale blue to deep violet. It still needed time, so Iain made use of the gap and turned to his alchemy research.
The upperclassman's puppet was pulled from the false compartment in his trunk and arranged across the floor. He had already dismantled it into utter chaos. The head rested on the desk, the torso leaned against the wall, the limbs were laid out neatly beside it, and a full spread of imitation biological organs had been organized by size across the windowsill.
Any part a human had, that puppet had too.
Following the model as best he could, Iain clumsily began reproducing pieces with the simple silicone materials he had bought nearby.
The diary floated up from the desk and hovered beside his shoulder. Its pages rustled once.
[What exactly are you doing with my puppet?]
"Serious research."
Iain used magic to bend metal and build the base of what looked like a chair. His head was full of inventions that, in his opinion, easily put him beyond Edison, that shameless patent hoarder.
[I'm warning you, do not use my puppet to invent some disgusting little puberty-release device. If you do, even if I'm trapped in this cursed Merlin tomb and can't get out, I'll still twist your head off and use it as a chamber pot.]
The upperclassman clearly had serious concerns about pubescent Iain's self-control.
"Hm? Is that a threat?" Iain frowned at the writing, briefly unable to tell whether this counted as a warning or some kind of reward.
[???????]
The diary was evidently sharp enough to respond with a full page of question marks.
"Relax. I'm inventing an ergonomic chair."
Iain fixed the puppet's legs to either side of the support frame.
He adjusted the angle until the knees bent naturally and the feet would rest flat on the floor.
Very quickly, under all his fiddling, the lower half of a long-legged, generously built office-lady puppet had been installed onto the base in a seated position. The puppet's hands could still move freely.
Magic gave them nearly human dexterity.
Of course, Iain's alchemical skills were still too shaky to make it truly advanced, so for now it could only move its arms and legs.
Once a person sat down, the puppet's hands would automatically settle onto the user's shoulders and begin to knead. The only thing missing was an expressive face.
[You call this an invention? This is just a grotesque pile of scrap shoved together.]
That was the problem with people from older generations. The upperclassman simply could not understand Iain's vision.
She was judging it from the standpoint of pure alchemical craftsmanship.
Far too narrow-minded.
"Your alchemy may be excellent, Upperclassman, but you clearly don't possess true wisdom." Iain sighed, looking suddenly profound. "How is this not genius? Look. All a user has to do is sit in this ergonomic chair and they can enjoy the tender care of an older sister."
"Jade knees as a cushion, a 36D backrest. Trust me, this is real ergonomics. Real service to humanity. People should lift me up like a saint for this."
"This is an invention ahead of its time."
Iain knew the problem was simply that he had surpassed his era by too much, so he generously refrained from blaming the upperclassman for her outdated thinking.
[...]
A heavy silence filled the diary.
[No one is ever going to truly love a cold puppet.]
The upperclassman neither understood nor respected Iain's invention. In fact, she seemed almost disdainful of the whole design.
What she failed to realize was that this ergonomic chair was only one tiny step in Iain's alchemical career, and one giant leap for mankind. He had far bigger plans for the future.
"Upperclassman, you still haven't grasped the essence of life. Sometimes a creation built from magical silicone and alchemy understands love better than flesh and blood ever could."
Iain began to argue his case.
That line of reasoning also made the ancient Dark Lord in the diary catch on to something.
[You want to create life with alchemy?]
She sounded genuinely surprised.
"Why shouldn't I? Too many alchemists think life is some forbidden zone reserved for the Creator. That kind of thinking is incredibly limiting. If they stopped specializing so blindly and learned a little science, they'd understand."
"At the end of the day, we humans, we wizards, are all just organized clusters of organic matter."
"When magic or bullets tear through our chests, who's to say we won't meet the bride or groom our own magic was always meant to shape for us in that dreamlike borderland?"
[And before that?]
"Before that, we live in a magical world where love is supposed to be the greatest force of all. So if a puppet exists because of you, then naturally it can awaken love magic for you."
"That is the power that can defeat Voldemort. And when that day comes…" Iain, after all that theorizing, still had not forgotten his Black Wizard Eradication Plan. "Dark wizards? Wiped out for good."
The diary went still for a long time.
[At least now I understand why the restored Arthur Pendragon wanted absolutely nothing to do with returning. It seems the old prophecy about why he would come back was accurate.]
[In fact, the problem may be even worse than most people ever imagined.]
The diary slipped into another vague, foggy comment that made no sense to Iain.
"Trust me, I'm a once-in-ten-thousand-years prodigy in alchemy."
Of course, not understanding the older witch's meaning did nothing to stop Iain from continuing to ramble confidently.
Outside the bedroom, the potion continued brewing.
The liquid in the cauldron rose in a large bubble, one drop splashing over the edge and landing on the table, where it burned a tiny black mark. The little skeleton casually cleaned it up.
It was carrying a metal basin in its hands. The basin was full of the dregs from that earlier failed batch. Naturally, chemical waste had to be disposed of somewhere.
And as Iain's chief steward, the little skeleton had its own harmless disposal method.
It put its helmet back on and crawled down into the tunnel again.
In a sense, it really could be called a mine. There was valuable gold down there, along with the occasional trace of mithril. Most people, however, would probably describe it as a graveyard.
Yes, exactly.
The little skeleton had dug up a great deal of gold for Iain from one tomb after another, along with a few rare magical metals.
And the reason it could find those tombs, besides its own unique talents, was that it had some rather helpful local friends.
"Squeak, squeak, squeak."
Deep in the tombs, the little skeleton began feeding Iain's potion waste to rats.
Many of them mutated on the spot, as if they had undergone a complete rebirth.
And just like that, the true origin of the latest Hogsmeade rat infestation was finally revealed.
Clearly, the real supernatural disaster in this whole affair was not Iain, suspicious as he looked.
The boy who so loved making the Dark Lord take the blame had, in the end, failed to escape the fate of becoming the one left holding the bag himself.
Perhaps that was karma coming full circle.