The frost on the dining room windows was thick enough to obscure the Scottish landscape outside, blurring the world into a palette of cold greys and whites. Bennie, Allen's large school owl, swooped in through a narrow gap in the glass, his feathers ruffled against the chill, dropping the latest issue of The Daily Prophet squarely onto the polished oak table.
Allen casually flipped the thick parchment open, intending to skim the usual political drivel, but the bold, moving ink of the front-page headline immediately hooked his analytical mind.
FAMOUS STAR ARRESTED: QUIDDITCH PRODIGY FACES AZKABAN FOR MURDER OVER GAMBLING DEBT
Allen's eyes tracked down the page. The article detailed the dramatic fall of Kane Rooney, the star player for the Appleby Arrows. Apparently, the athlete had been entirely consumed by the underground world of illegal Quidditch betting, racking up an astronomical debt of nearly 800,000 Galleons owed to a notorious underworld figure named Valdi Best.
When Best had finally cornered the star to collect the debt, the confrontation had rapidly deteriorated. Cornered, panicked, and driven into a feral rage, Rooney had drawn his wand and ended the debt collector's life with an Unforgivable Curse. After a brief period on the run, the disgraced athlete had been forcefully apprehended by Ministry Aurors the previous night. The article proudly promised ongoing coverage of the impending trial.
Naturally, the byline belonged to Rita Skeeter.
Allen noted with a grim sense of satisfaction that while Rita was still bound by his Truth-Telling Charm—forcing her to report only verifiable facts—she hadn't lost her flair for dramatic juxtaposition. Below the text were two starkly contrasting magical photographs. The first showed Kane in his prime, straddling a sleek Firebolt, his face split into a triumphant, charismatic grin as he waved to an unseen, adoring crowd. The second image was suffocatingly bleak: Kane chained to a Ministry chair, his robes torn, his shoulders slumped in defeat, staring hollowly at the floor as a man whose entire universe had just collapsed.
"What an absolute waste of aerodynamic brilliance," Owen Harris muttered, sitting down heavily in the chair next to Allen with a steaming bowl of oatmeal. He stared at the pictures, shaking his head. "If that fool hadn't let his galleons dictate his wand hand, he was a lock for the national squad."
Owen took a slow, bitter sip of his tea, his tone shifting from that of a detached observer to a deeply frustrated fan. "The Quidditch World Cup is next year, Allen. Rooney had the Wronski Feint down to a mathematical science. He was supposed to be England's trump card at Seeker."
"It seems his risk assessment was significantly poorer off the pitch," Allen noted dryly, turning the page.
"Geraldine is going to be pulling his hair out over this," Owen sighed, snatching the paper from Allen's grip to read the finer details. "The national team manager built his entire offensive strategy around Rooney's speed. Now? The World Cup qualifiers are going to be a bloodbath for England. I doubt they'll even make it out of the European bracket."
The name Geraldine sparked a sudden, sharp connection in Allen's memory. It was a familiar name. He cast his mind back to Hogwarts. Geraldine was the official who had accompanied Dumbledore onto the pitch to assess the fairness of their school matches.
A quiet realization bloomed behind Allen's calm eyes. So that was it. Geraldine hadn't just been there for a routine inspection. The manager must have already known about Rooney's spiraling gambling addiction and erratic behavior. He had come to Hogwarts actively scouting for a prodigy, looking for a backup Seeker to salvage the national team's future.
He was assessing me, and likely Cedric Diggory, Allen concluded silently. If the position for the national team is suddenly wide open... I cannot afford to hold back. The upcoming match against Hufflepuff was no longer just about the House Cup; it was an audition for the global stage. Allen resolved to utterly dominate the airspace in that game.
"Whoever the Auror was that finally pinned Rooney down deserves a commendation," Owen remarked, tapping the picture of the arrested athlete. "Rooney wasn't just fast on a broom; he was known for being a remarkably vicious duelist in his youth. To take him down alive without collateral damage takes serious wand-work."
Across the table, Allen caught a subtle shift in the room's dynamic. Albert, who was nursing his injured left arm beneath the table, suddenly focused incredibly hard on his bowl of porridge. The tips of Albert's ears had flushed a deep, tell-tale red. Though he kept his head down, Allen could see the faint, undeniable twitch of a proud smile fighting to break through his stoic expression.
Allen's gaze dropped momentarily to the spot where Albert's dark magic laceration had been healed the day before. The timeline matched perfectly. The "low-life with a dark hex" Albert had mentioned fighting on his shift wasn't a random street thug. It had been a desperate, cornered Quidditch star firing an Unforgivable Curse.
A wave of profound respect washed over Allen. He didn't say a word, merely raising his pumpkin juice in a silent, entirely unnoticed toast to his older brother. Albert had taken down a killer, survived a dark curse, and kept his mouth completely shut about it. The Harris family was evolving.
That evening, Owen pulled Allen aside, leading him into the quiet sanctuary of the ground-floor study. He didn't just look like a middle-management Ministry worker anymore; there was a new sharpness to his posture, a confident weight in his step.
Without a word, Owen placed a velvet-lined expansion pouch on the mahogany desk.
"Check it," Owen instructed, his voice low and thrumming with suppressed excitement. "Every single item on that impossible list you drafted. Not a dram or a leaf missing."
Allen opened the pouch, his magical senses instantly overwhelmed by the rich, complex auras radiating from within. Powdered moon-calf horn, perfectly preserved fluxweed harvested at the precise stroke of midnight, and several tightly sealed vials of highly volatile, restricted fluid.
"This is exceptional work, Dad," Allen said, genuinely impressed. "Some of these are heavily regulated by the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. How did you manage it so quickly?"
Owen leaned against the desk, crossing his arms, looking deeply satisfied. "I simply stopped asking for permission and started speaking the language the old families use. I leveraged some contacts, dropped a substantial amount of our new... liquidity... into the right palms, and watched the red tape vanish." He let out a soft chuckle. "I must admit, Allen, the Slytherin approach to bureaucracy is remarkably efficient. The power of capital is intoxicating when you finally know how to wield it."
With the necessary ingredients secured, Allen wasted no time. He claimed the rest of his holiday free time for himself, retreating to the invisible, floating Chamber of Secrets suspended above the manor's courtyard. It was the only place secure enough to prevent the massive magical fluctuations of his work from triggering the Ministry's underage magic traces.
He sealed the spatial door behind him, plunging the hidden platform into a sterile, isolated silence. He set up two heavy, brass-rimmed cauldrons, arranging his silver cutting knives, crystal vials, and the mountain of raw herbs with surgical precision.
Allen closed his eyes, breathing deeply to center his mind. When he opened them, his gaze was devoid of distraction, entirely locked into the analytical mindset of a master alchemist.
He didn't hesitate to slice into the rarest of the ingredients. In the larger cauldron, he followed Master Verto's ancient, standard formula to the letter, establishing a baseline of the Mana Elixir.
But the smaller, secondary cauldron was where true genius lay. Utilizing the System's real-time analysis of his own biological and magical pathways, Allen calculated microscopic adjustments. He altered the temperature by half a degree here, added an extra counter-clockwise stir there, and tweaked the ratios of the catalyst herbs to perfectly synchronize with his unique magical signature. This personalized batch wouldn't just expand a wizard's magical capacity; it would integrate with Allen's core flawlessly, eliminating the usual rejection sickness associated with enhancement potions.
The hours bled away into the dense, iridescent fog rising from the cauldrons. Allen stood over the boiling liquids like a statue, his eyes darting back and forth, tracking the subtle color shifts and viscosity changes. His concentration was so absolute that his concept of time vanished. The only interruption to his intense focus was the quiet popping sound of the house-elf, Maggie, appearing to magically stoke and stabilize the magical fires while Allen took brief, necessary moments to hydrate.
Eventually, the violent swirling in the cauldrons began to slow, settling into a heavy, rhythmic simmer before stopping entirely.
Allen let out a long, shuddering breath, the tension leaving his shoulders. The grueling process was complete. He thanked the founders that this concoction didn't require the agonizing six-month maturation cycle of Felix Felicis, or he would have been forced to abandon it for the school term.
As the liquid sat cooling in the cold air of the spatial fold, its physical properties began to shift dramatically. The potion transitioned from a volatile, bubbling light blue to a deep, abyssal indigo. The ambient moonlight filtering through the invisible walls hit the surface of the potion, and the liquid seemed to trap the light, emitting a soft, ethereal blue luminescence from within.
Allen reached out, tapping the surface with the back of a silver spoon. It wasn't liquid anymore. As it cooled, it had thickened into a dense, firm consistency, resembling an exceptionally tough gelatin.
Carefully, using a charmed silver spatula, Allen portioned the gelatinous elixir into wide-mouthed crystal flasks. The larger cauldron yielded exactly nine standard bottles—enough to drastically elevate the magical reserves of his father, aunt, and siblings.
The smaller cauldron, his personalized, System-optimized batch, yielded only a single, glowing flask.
"Let's see if the legends of Alexandria hold true," Allen murmured, holding his personal flask up to the light. He hit a rune on the wall, plunging the invisible chamber into absolute darkness. Immediately, the flask in his hand glowed with a brilliant, pulsing sapphire light, illuminating his face.
"The visual quality is flawless," Allen analyzed, before peeling back the stopper to check the olfactory profile. He immediately winced, his eyes watering as he aggressively pinched his nose. "Merlin's beard. It smells like someone set fire to a vault of concentrated mothballs. The ancient texts conveniently left that detail out."
He securely stored the potions in his spatial ring. But his work for the night wasn't finished.
He cleared the table, replacing the cauldrons with a specialized alchemical furnace. Next to it, he placed the empty, hollowed-out Mithril containers that had originally housed the ancient ingredients.
Drawing his wooden wand, Allen recalled the theories from the Handbook of Alchemy by the ancient master, Jeb. Modern wizards relied on wood and animal cores because they were highly conductive and easy to tame. But Jeb theorized that certain magical metals—specifically pure Mithril—possessed the unique ability to grow. A wooden wand channeled magic, but a Mithril wand would absorb a fraction of the caster's power over time, evolving alongside the wizard, permanently adapting to their specific magical frequency.
Until now, Allen simply hadn't possessed the raw, incredibly expensive materials to test the theory.
With a flick of his wrist, Allen ignited a localized, magically intensified flame within the furnace. The heat was blistering, warping the air in the chamber. Using basic telekinesis, he floated the empty Mithril canisters into the heart of the white-hot fire.
Mithril was notoriously stubborn, but under the relentless pressure of Allen's concentrated magical fire, the boxes began to yield. They warped, melted, and lost their shape, turning into a pool of blindingly bright, liquid silver that flowed like heavy mercury along the bottom of the crucible.
Sweat beaded on Allen's forehead as he focused his will. He extended his hand, using his magic as an invisible pair of tongs, pulling the liquid metal up into the air. He stretched and molded the molten silver, slowly forcing it into the shape of a sleek, perfectly balanced cylinder, exactly the length from his inner wrist to his elbow.
While the metal was still glowing red-hot and malleable, Allen brought his wooden wand forward. Moving with the frantic precision of a master sculptor, he began to physically carve deeply complex, microscopic Ancient Runes directly into the cooling surface of the Mithril staff, binding his magical signature to the metal before it could solidify into its final, unbreakable form.