Harry Potter: The Ring Maker

Chapter 79: Forging

The twin nodded "yeah that makes sense , Hagrid ordered this ring didn't he?" he asked with a knowing grin. "How'd you guess?" Nick asked surprised. "The poor bloke's been griping about slugs in his garden for as long as we can remember." the other twin said with a chuckle. Nick smiled "yup , that sounds like Hagrid alright. Did you know when I asked him to think of an enchantment of some kind slug repellent was the first thing he said?" Nick complained jokingly. "Sounds like a bad joke doesn't it?" he added on with a mock depressed sigh.-

The twins both laughed at his acting and Nick checked the metal and nodded to himself when it felt mostly firm. Waving his wand the metal was placed on the anvil and his hammer and a pair of tongs gently flew off the ground and into his hand. "The first thing I am going to do is neaten this metal up so that shaping it becomes easier." He said without looking away from what he was doing. This was a simple process that involve a lot of small hits to ever so slightly modify the shape of the metal towards what he wanted.-

In this particular case he was basically just making it round so he could squish it into a hockey puck shape before fixing any issues that show up. Once the metal started to get too cold to work without damaging he put it back in the furnace at a lower temperature since he wasn't trying to melt it again. "Don't expect to be able to finish the work with a single heat as contrary to what it might seem the stuff does lose heat really fast." he explained as he went back to neatening the metal up some more.-

Another two heats later and he finally had a rough sphere without any cracks as far as he could see which was a good sign. He then put the metal in the furnace and got it hotter than normal but not melted and with a much stronger blow flattened the sphere slightly. "Now that I am on the actually important shaping part of this I have to be carefully not to crack the metal with my blows or it could force me to start all over." he explained and the twins were watching him closely.

"Notice how my hammers face is slightly curved? That is so that it more gently pushes the metal to the side when I strike down preventing the metal from cracking more than if it was completely flat." Nick said while briefly showing the twins what he meant. Nick made sure that he flipped the metal constantly to more evenly spread out the stress on it. Soon he had a fairly even hockey puck of metal that he then ignores to grab a hole punch. Gently moving the metal to the hardy hole in the anvil he tapped the back of the punch with his hammer denting the center of the metal.-

He the flipped the metal and did the same thing "What I'm doing now is making a nice even hole in the metal by distributing the force on both sides moving the metal to the sides rather than straight up or down." Nick explained and as time went on the twins saw what he meant. The center of the metal looked heavily dented on both sides and with a couple more taps Nick neatly poked a hole through the thin bit of material. "Now I'll work to widen this hole and get rid of any edges the ring may have." Nick explained calmly.-

Flitwick had entered the room at some point and watched on as Nick taught the twins the basics of what he was doing as well as the why's. To his great delight the two trouble makers seemed positively enraptured by the lesson. All of the teaching staff were aware of the twins knack for creation but had a headache about it as they tended to use those talents for mischief. Still it pleased the small professor to no ends to see them truly engaged in learning a craft. Maybe they would even get caught up in the art so much they ran out of time for their pranks.-

'I wonder if I could get away with having a class or group dedicated to the crafts?' Flitwick pondered after seeing this scene. While the school did teach alchemy the number of participants was abysmal due to the extremely high requirements to even start learning it. More simple crafting classes such as smithing , jewel crafting or veritology may prove far more successful. 'I'll bring it up at dinner to see how well received the idea is.' the small professor decided while watching Nick work.

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