The woven gold ring earned Julian just enough ring points to finally purchase the storage enchantment he had been eyeing. With that in hand, he moved straight on to crafting his own storage ring.
The design he had in mind for this one was... unusual.
He took his inspiration from boggarts and mimics, those shape-shifting horrors that lurked in corners waiting for the unwary. To make that vision real, he gathered a bit of every single metal he had on hand, then forge-welded them together into what any other smith would have called a disaster of Damascus.
The resulting billet was ugly, erratic, and very temperamental to work with.
Perfect.
He forced that stubborn metal into the shape of a simple band. No flourishes, no decoration, just a plain ring that only looked plain at a distance. Once the base was done, he poured into it everything he knew about mimics, boggarts, and creatures that changed shape to unsettle their prey.
Then he layered the storage enchantment he had bought from the system over the top, binding it all together.
The system's assessment appeared a moment later.
[RING NAME: Greed
Grade: RARE
Abilities: Autosizing, Formless, Devouring Counterattack, Fear Transformation, Storage (three cubic meters)
Description: A monstrous construct forged to stand as a nightmarish guardian over its owner's possessions. Like a boggart, it has no single fixed shape, constantly shifting its appearance while it lies in wait for anyone foolish enough to steal from it.
System appraisal: An intricate creation that raises questions about the mental stability of the promising ring smith responsible!]
Julian chuckled at the system's jab. He was not shocked at the rarity rating. Anything involving space manipulation tended to sit in the higher tiers of magic.
Greed behaved exactly as described.
On his left pointer finger, the ring never stayed the same for more than a few seconds. The metal rippled, morphed, and twisted into strange new shapes and color patterns, as if it were bored and constantly trying on new faces.
Just as he had suspected, unlocking inventory really had needed a proper storage construct.
Now that Greed existed, the inventory tab was active.
He wasted no time. One by one, he stored his schoolbooks, equipment, and even his trunk inside the ring's small internal vault. Harry watched enviously as Julian's luggage simply vanished into thin air.
That envy vanished quickly the first time Harry reached out and tried to grab the ring.
Greed reacted at once. It flowed and bulged, turning into Vernon Dursley's sneering face, then lunged and bit Harry's hand.
Harry yelped and jerked back, clutching his fingers. The ring settled back on Julian's hand, once more an innocent band.
Harry was not amused.
Julian, on the other hand, thought it was one of the funniest things he had ever seen: a fat, purpled face appearing on his finger just to bite someone.
He laughed until he had to lean on the bed for support.
Eventually, when he had calmed down, he apologized to Harry and explained properly. "It is a theft countermeasure," he said, still grinning. "The ring reacts to the thief's fears and uses them against them."
Harry grudgingly admitted that it was a clever idea, even if he did not appreciate being the test subject. He did not bother asking about the details of the enchantment. At this point, he just filed it under "yet another weird thing about Julian."
Even with magic in the picture now, Harry could tell Julian was not just unusual, he was an anomaly.
Whenever Harry felt he had finally figured his friend out, a new, completely unexpected layer appeared. Julian was like an onion with no middle, just endless rings of mysteries wrapped around more mysteries.
For the sake of his own sanity, Harry decided to accept that Julian was strange and stop trying to solve him.
He did make Julian promise one thing, though: when they left for Hogwarts, Julian had to store Harry's trunk in Greed as well.
Julian agreed without hesitation. He had already planned to do that. Carrying trunks by hand when he had a portable storage space would have been idiotic.
...
For the rest of the month, Julian made full use of the Ministry's traditional grace period and practiced magic heavily in the workshop with Harry.
His talent became impossible to miss.
Every spell from the first-year curriculum that he could safely cast, he mastered with ridiculous ease. Lumos, Nox, Wingardium Leviosa, Expelliarmus, the lot. He ran through them all, refining his aim, his casting speed, and his control until he could use them fluently.
What Hogwarts expected to take a full year, he wrapped up in less than a month.
There were only two areas he could not really touch yet.
Transfiguration required careful supervision and a well-stocked classroom, and he had neither. Potions, on the other hand, was dangerous even with guidance. All he had was a textbook for theory and no proper ingredients. One stupid mistake with improvised materials and he could easily end up missing a finger for the rest of his life.
Or worse.
So he left those two branches of magic alone, for now.
...
While practicing, Julian stumbled onto something interesting.
The elvish he had learned through Celebrimbor's craft could substitute for the old Latin in spellwork.
In fact, it could substitute for every spell, no matter what language the incantation normally used.
He suspected it was because that elvish was simply a more potent, fundamental spell language, a tongue that carried stronger conceptual weight in magic.
Oddly, simply lifting his wand and giving a command in elvish usually did nothing at all. Most of the time, the magic did not answer. It seemed he still needed the structure of spellcraft, not just raw words.
There were, however, exceptions.
One of those exceptions nearly blew his head off.
On a whim, he said "Aglad" – the elvish word for lightning – and slashed his wand downward in a short, sharp flick.
A blinding bolt of electricity ripped through the space in front of him, slamming into the floor so hard that the sound cracked like thunder inside the shed. When his vision cleared, a smoking crater stared back up at him.
The blast had landed practically at his feet.
Julian stared at it for a long moment, pulse pounding.
Then he smiled thinly.
He tucked that little discovery away in the deepest part of his mental arsenal, a last-resort trick. If a certain weakened Dark Lord with a face on the back of someone's head ever decided to get too close, Julian doubted that Quirrelmort would be able to react fast enough to dodge Aglad.