No Where Else To Go

Chapter 4

The image above is my Mom's new bunny. His name is Mr. Fluffybutt. She bought him on impulse 😂. Any other images or videos do not belong to me.

"I know I should be happy you made it in public without me, but I can't help but mourn the loss of your hand in mine whenever we go places." Draco says dramatically when we get back to Dads house after having gone shopping for the day.

Ever since he found out I was gay, he has started flirting even more, if that's even possible. I try not to let myself consider that he means it. Besides, he has feelings for someone else. He told me himself.

"Think of it this way Dray, I can now go out in public when you're at Hogwarts without passing out alone. What if somebody whose looking for me found me in that state?"

"Okay you aren't going anywhere alone."

"Dray!" I laugh. "I'm going to have to sometime. Dad won't be here either, and I can't possibly stay in the house until Christmas."

"Of course you can't. You do have lots of very important things to do after all."

"Shut up!"

"Aw, come on Ian! I just need a little color change! Please? It's so cute! Yes!" He exclaims in success.

"Shove off!"

I go into my room and pout on my bed. I hear him follow me, and the bed dips when he sits down. I make a point of ignoring him, but I regret it when I feel my sides being tickled. An unwilling squeal comes from me, and I try to pull away. He grabs me by the waist, throwing me down on the bed, and sitting on me so I can't escape. He continues tickling me till we're both out of breath, small huffs of laughter escaping occasionally.

Looking up at him, a surge of emotions bubble from me, and all I can do is stare into his mercury gaze. A hand moves a strand of my long black hair out of my face, and my heart beat picks up. I suddenly notice the position we are in, and I push him up and off my lap. I go over to my desk, trying to think of something to say.

"Hadrian?"

"Sorry, I think I might have figured out what I can do to fix the rune set so you can use magic on technology." And as though the gods blessed me, an idea pops into my head for just that. "Here, help me." I call him over.

"Wow. You really understand all of this?" He asks as he looks over my shoulder.

"Of course I do. I'm the one who wrote it. See, there are some runes that work together, but sometimes they just don't get along. The closest anyone ever got to figuring out why is when Nicolas Flamel looked at the spell form of the runes, and compared the spell's arithmancy numbers. Then he combined runes with similar numbers, and a lot of times it worked, but it still wasn't perfect.

"It hit me one day, that if there are spell forms of the runes, and the runes work in a similar, but more permanent, way as spells, then maybe they have their own arithmancy number. I drew out a rune that I knew the corresponding spell to, and cast the spell to reveal the numbers. It turns out they really do have their own number, completely different from the spells. I compared numbers of runes I knew worked together, and looked at the pattern. It turns out, the more numbers two runes have in common at the point of connection, the better they combine with each other.

"It's believed that you can't cross runes from different alphabets, but what if I tried it? If the numbers match up, despite being from separate alphabets, I could possibly combine them. Then, instead of trying variations in different alphabets, I can use any rune from any alphabet, widening my options by thousands of runes!"

He watches over my shoulder as I jot down a few numbers, comparing them, and determining how I could combine them. I start by testing something less dangerous with different alphabets. I use a two rune combination, and shout in triumph when it does exactly what I want it to do, only better.