Boom.
The explosion was dull but penetrating, rattling through the sealed walls of the incubation tank.
The pearl-white egg seemed to take a direct hit from an invisible bolt of lightning , one violent, shuddering flash. Then a hairline crack split open across the smooth shell, black and thin as a thread.
Smoke poured out through the gap. Thick, acrid, scorched. It moved like a serpent's tongue tasting the air.
The alarm runes carved along the tank's interior fired at the same instant, and a shrill, piercing shriek filled the greenhouse.
"Idiot!"
Hagrid's roar hit like a thunderclap.
He moved impossibly fast for a man his size, covering the distance to the offending tank in an instant. He snatched up the large bucket of specially prepared blue potion sitting nearby — the foul-smelling kind , and upended it without ceremony.
Splash.
The torrent hit the egg square on. It hissed, steamed, and finally went still.
Hagrid didn't bother turning around.
"Twenty points from your house!"
"The guide says minimal energy output! Minimal! Were you trying to fire it up like firewood in a winter hearth?"
He jabbed a finger at the wreckage.
"Now, grab the red, sticky stuff from your emergency kit and seal that crack. Right now. Go!"
He shook his head, incredulous. "I didn't want to believe it. But here we are. Professor Holmes actually predicted someone would do exactly this."
---
On the other side of the greenhouse, Fred and George's spirit of scientific inquiry had once again gotten the better of whatever reverence they'd managed to scrape together for Professor Holmes.
"Fred." George's voice dropped to a murmur. His eyes had that particular gleam , the dangerous, inspired kind. "Single-point guidance is too inefficient. The force distribution is completely uneven."
"So if we bypass the conduction rod entirely," Fred picked up without missing a beat, "and create a gentle, uniform energy field , one that wraps around the whole egg —"
"Its hatching would be perfect."
Their understanding of the word gentle, however, turned out to differ significantly from Professor Holmes's.
The improvised, unstable energy field hit the unsuspecting Blast-Ended Skrewt egg directly.
Hmmm. Hmmm. Hmmm.
The egg didn't glow. It didn't crack. Instead it began vibrating at a high frequency , like an enraged hornet the size of a fist , producing exactly the kind of sound that sets your teeth on edge.
"Weasley!"
Hagrid's gaze snapped over like two searchlights locking onto a target.
He wasn't flustered this time. He'd clearly made contingency plans for whatever trouble these two might start. He grabbed the long-handled insulated tool with the giant pincers from the workbench, reached into the tank with practiced ease, and clamped down.
Snap.
The vibrating egg transferred cleanly onto the special stone slab waiting nearby. The moment it left the field, the vibrations ceased.
"We were optimizing the process, Professor!" Fred declared, chin up. "All in the name of magical advancement!"
"Every word in Professor Holmes's manual," Hagrid said, his beard quivering with barely contained fury, "every punctuation mark, was paid for with failure. His failures. So that yours don't have to be fatal."
He pointed at the now-silent egg, something haunted crossing his face.
"You two almost set it off early. Gryffindor, fifty points..." He caught himself. "Twenty points. I mean twenty. And after class, you're both replacing the calming moss in every single tank in this room. By hand."
---
Not all the chaos came from recklessness.
A Hufflepuff girl stood frozen over her tank, gripping the conduction rod with both hands. They were shaking , not a little, but violently, like a leaf caught in a high wind. The magical energy flowing through the rod came in fits and starts, uneven and unreliable.
Her egg didn't crack. It didn't vibrate. It simply rolled, once, across the moss.
Whoosh.
A bone spur , black, sharp as a needle, barely half an inch long , shot out from the shell without warning, sliced a cold line through the air, and snapped back just as fast.
Everyone who caught it instinctively sucked in a breath.
When Hagrid spoke this time, his voice was an entirely different thing.
He crossed to the girl, who was two seconds from bursting into tears, and closed his enormous hand gently around her wrist. Steady. Unhurried. He guided her through the remaining steps, maintaining that calm, even pressure until it was done.
"It's alright, child."
Deep. Reliable.
"Fear's not a bad thing. It keeps you careful. But sometimes you have to trust the steps Professor Holmes laid out. They work better than you'd think."
A rare smile crossed his face. Quiet pride.
"His skill's been personally recognized by Mr. Newt Scamander himself."
---
Through all of it , the roars, the near-explosions, the shrieks , a Ravenclaw girl worked in complete silence.
Every step she took matched the Safety Guide exactly. Not a fraction over. Not a fraction under.
Her egg produced no violent reaction whatsoever.
It simply glowed , a warm, stable gold that spread evenly across the entire shell. Like amber lit from within. Like the last light of a sunset, held perfectly still.
When the bell rang, most groups had barely scraped through. The greenhouse smelled of singed tension, lingering adrenaline, and , inexplicably , something that smelled almost good. Almost edible.
The more delicious, the more dangerous.
They all thought it at the same moment without saying it aloud. Very on-brand for Professor Holmes.
Bags started rustling. People began to pack up. The tension started bleeding out of the room.
Then the Ravenclaw girl made a sound.
Not a scream. A strangled, barely-voiced exclamation, the kind that escapes when something defies what you're willing to believe.
"Professor — come look at this."
Every head turned.
In her incubation tank, the only egg that had glowed with steady gold was changing.
The patterns on the shell , those molten, drifting lines that had flowed like liquid gold were no longer wandering at random. They were moving with purpose. Slowly. Deliberately. At a speed the naked eye could just barely follow.
Stroke by stroke.
As if an invisible hand was writing inside the shell. Tracing something out. Assembling something that had no name in any modern language.
The pattern that emerged was extraordinarily complex , ancient-looking, dense with rune-like structure, heavy with the weight of something very old and not remotely understood.
---
Daily Question:
When handling an "Injured Bowtruckle," the correct first step is:
A. Gently touch its antennae with a beech twig (to convey a friendly signal)
B. Immediately apply "Blood-Replenishing Potion" to the wound (to prevent sap loss)
C. Place it in a wooden box lined with moss (to simulate its natural habitat)
D. Whistle at a specific frequency (to calm its nerves)
➤ Next: The Magical Industrial Revolution! It Starts with a Tiny Egg!
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