The baby dragon was about to hatch.
One morning in March, Harry and Ron received a little note from Hagrid, then told Tris about it at noon.
Tris wasn't particularly interested.
He had been frustrated out of his mind lately.
Since acquiring Voldemort's memories, his understanding of dark magic had advanced by leaps and bounds. The only thing he lacked was magical power.
The Wizarding World generally believed that magical power came down to talent. Nothing else mattered.
But even the most gifted wizard needed time for his magical power to grow. Even someone as powerful as Dumbledore couldn't have beaten a thirty-year-old elite Auror at thirteen.
Well, at fourteen, that might have been another story.
Monstrous talent simply defied reason.
At his current rate of growth, Tris believed he wouldn't progress any more slowly than Dumbledore or Voldemort. Even so, four years from now, when Voldemort had originally returned, he would only be on par with an elite Auror, or slightly stronger.
He could probably hold his own against the Death Eaters, but against Voldemort, his chances of winning would be slim.
After learning just how many varied forms of dark magic Voldemort had mastered, he was even more certain of that. Although he planned to stop Voldemort's resurrection outright, whether he could succeed was still unknown.
Judging by what had already happened, this world had tremendous inertia.
Many things he had originally thought would be averted had happened anyway. Tris couldn't be sure whether Voldemort's resurrection would be another event carried along by that immense inertia.
I have to get stronger!
Tris felt an urgent need, but at least he had made progress compared to before: now he had a direction to follow.
Buried within Voldemort's vast store of dark magic information was a much smaller, but equally