Sentire, a Hogwarts Legacy story

Chapter 3 - With Strings Attached

"Damned woman. She's late—again."

Moonlight shone on the ruins of an isolated castle tower, escaping through the crumbling cracks, illuminating curious stone carvings and a rather ostentatious statue of a tall, bearded wizard. In the center was a newer piece in the scene—a bubbling, ruby-red filled cauldron wrapped with smoky yet sweet smells.

At the cauldron's rim, a sandy-haired gentleman read and re-read handwritten instructions from a piece of folded parchment. With a slight hesitation, he spun his etched, misshapen hawthorn wand three times clockwise. His three-piece suit was magically pressed neat, though as if for show, his white undershirt's collar was slightly undone. As he straightened his back, his smooth hair passed his chin, revealing a pair of impenetrably dark eyes. Magnus Racks looked like an angel on earth, excluding the set wrinkles from scowling for a decade straight.

A taller, ash-brown haired woman calmly strode forward to his side, playfully gliding her slender fingers from one broad shoulder to the other. Visually opposite of her companion, piercing grey eyes peered from the graceful woman's hauntingly fair face, marred by a large blasting scar on her left side. From her exquisitely tailored jacket, down to her leather custom boots, she was fashionably clad in the greatest variety of grey and black fabrics from London's finest seamstresses.

"I believe I am just in time," the woman countered with a mischievous smirk. Unfazed, she stuck her finger straight into the boiling concoction and gave it a taste.

"Mm, almost there." She licked her lip in delight, giving Magnus a few complementary pats on his shoulder. "Mags, go fetch the remaining reagents, could you please?"

Quizzically, he asked, "What am I, a dog?" As he rebelliously leaned forward towards the woman's face, she slyly smirked. With quickness, she moved her fingers to scratch his bare chin. "Who's a good boy! Who's a good boy?" He flinched—red as a balloon.

"Merlin! Stop, Eris. We're professionals," he exclaimed as he swatted her arm away. She giggled, "Don't say that with such a big smile on your face."

He groaned in agitation. "You know," he continued while shaking his pointer finger at Eris, "NO ONE else at the Ministry would ever dare treat me like this."

Eris chuckled, putting her hands on her hips. "Who else would keep you in your place, Professor?"

He let his hands slack to his sides. Sighing, Magnus turned to walk away to his bag of supplies, later raising his hands in a show of defeat. As he left, her grin sharply reverted neutral. Her slate eyes shifted to the draught in her eye, and as she leaned over the cauldron, she wafted her hand to take in its smells. "Still needs a bit more... spice."

Eris took an unmarked violet vial from her satchel and placed 2 drops of its contents inside the cauldron. With a strange wail, the concoction spiraled and settled in an instant. The sweet smells were gone.

"Here they are." Magnus called out, walking over with a basket filled with assorted reagents. Eris curtsied in thanks, then proceeded to clumsily dump all the ingredients into the cauldron.

"W-weren't you supposed to chop those?" he asked in surprise. "I'm no potion master, but-"

"Shh," Eris interrupted as she raised her hand in objection. Lifting her pointer finger a second later at Magnus, she added, "Just wait."

A few seconds passed, and the once scarlet concoction swirled into a clearless one. A small smile of satisfaction lit on Eris' face.

Eris waved her wavy walnut wand over the cauldron, flash-burning its contents with two waves and a splash. All that was left was a few ounces of a colorless, odorless liquid.