"Oh?" Julian murmured, eyebrows climbing as he noticed one of the furnace dials already set to a particular glyph. The marking was familiar enough to make him blink.
"Something wrong, mate?" one of the twins asked, suddenly nervous at his tone.
Julian laughed. "No, quite the opposite. Whoever you got this from did you a favor. They preloaded it with an extra flame type at no charge." He grinned broadly, clearly pleased.
Both twins perked up at once. "Seriously? Which kind?" one of them demanded.
"Nothing too outrageous, just dragon fire," Julian replied. "Still, that was very considerate of them."
"Guess we owe them a thank you letter then," the other twin said with a crooked smile.
Julian finished examining the furnace, checking the hinges, doors, dials, and enchantment seams before nodding in satisfaction. Then he raised his wand and encased the heavy block in a levitation charm, lifting it carefully off the floor.
"I am going to take this to my workshop and get it installed. You are all welcome to come along if you want to watch," he offered, waving a hand to the room at large.
More than a few Gryffindors shuffled after him out of sheer curiosity, trailing behind as he guided the floating furnace through the corridors. When he reached his workshop door, he slipped the key into the lock, turned it, and ushered everyone inside.
It was almost comical how many students stopped dead just past the threshold, startled by the sight that greeted them. Tools of various shapes and sizes lay neatly arranged along the ground by the walls, and the anvil sat like a small shrine in the center of the room.
...
"Didn't you just get this room yesterday?" Seamus asked, sounding confused.
Julian lowered the furnace gently at the far wall and turned. "Yes. Why?" he asked, not immediately seeing the issue.
"But how do you already have so many tools then?" Seamus pressed.
Julian finally realized what had caused the confusion. "I already owned all of this. Until I had a proper workshop, everything was in storage," he said calmly.
Seamus seemed to accept that, and fell silent as he drifted over to inspect the tools more closely with the others.
Julian spent a few minutes experimenting with positioning, shifting the furnace slightly, adding a bit of support underneath, and adjusting its height until it sat at the perfect level for comfortable, efficient use.
When he was satisfied, he straightened and looked around at the crowd.
"All right. I am about to get to work. Unless you truly want to spend the next few hours getting hot and bored, you might want to clear out," he said honestly, then twisted one of the dials.
A wave of blistering heat washed through the room as the furnace roared to life.
Most of the gathered students fled at once, fanning themselves and muttering as they hurried back to the cooler hallways. Only Fred and George remained, wearing matching expressions of stubborn interest.
Julian noticed and shrugged. "Suit yourselves. I am just breaking down raw materials until dinner. It is not exactly thrilling to watch," he warned.
He reached into Greed and drew out one of the random, half ruined metal items he had salvaged from the Room of Requirement, then tossed it into the waiting furnace.
He twisted the heat dial higher and waited, watching as the metal inside began to glow and soften, right to the edge of liquefaction. When it reached the critical point, he used a pair of tongs to pull it free and drop it onto the anvil.
Holding it steady with the tongs in his left hand, he raised his hammer and brought it down hard.
The sound of metal on metal rang through the room. The warped object flattened under the repeated blows as he pounded it again and again, driving out old shapes and weaknesses until it was nothing but a broad, glowing sheet.
Once he had it spread to the right thickness, he folded the sheet over itself, then again, then again, layer upon layer, until it became a compact square of folded metal.
That block went back into the furnace to reheat until it hovered once more near the melting point. Then he placed it on the anvil and hammered it carefully, forge welding the layers together into a single, solid ingot.
Still hot, the ingot was carried to a clear corner of the floor and set aside to cool.
Julian reached into Greed, pulled out another scrap of metal, and began the entire process over again.
...
He kept it up for four full hours.
Heat, hammer, fold, weld, stack.
All the while, the twins watched from the side and muttered to each other, occasionally asking a question or making a comment about what they were seeing.
Partway through, Professor Flitwick appeared at the door, drawn by the rhythmic ringing of hammer blows and the glow spilling into the hallway.
He stepped inside, eyes bright, and joined the twins at the sidelines.
The Charms professor spent a few minutes quietly explaining the importance of what Julian was doing, detailing how salvaging and refining materials ahead of time removed a massive headache later. Trying to reclaim and purify metal when working under a deadline was a nightmare, so it made far more sense to get it all done in large batches during free time.
After that, he wandered over to the neatly lined row of ingots Julian had already finished and began inspecting them, turning each over in his small hands.
He raised his brows in surprise at several specimens, clearly recognizing rare alloys and unusual magical metals. When he reached one ingot that gleamed with a particular pale sheen, his expression turned especially strange.
Goblin silver, he thought, impressed and a little unsettled.
...
When the clock finally ticked over to six, Julian shut off the furnace and exhaled in relief. The room felt like the inside of a dragon's throat.
He dragged an arm across his brow, wiping away the sweat that had gathered there. Throughout the entire session, he had kept the furnace at a higher than normal temperature to speed up the breakdown process, which had turned the room into a sweltering box.
With a flick of his wand, he stripped the sweat and tiny metal shards from his clothes and skin, gathering them into a faint shimmering cluster that vanished as he banished it away.
"I am honestly surprised you two stuck around this long," he said to the twins, meaning it.
"Seemed like the kind of thing worth knowing, is all," they replied together, identical grins stretching across their faces.