Rimuru Tempest and the World of Morons with Magic Sticks

Arc 2: Chapter 8

A few more months passed by like a breeze, including a 'christmas' that I didn't really end up celebrating, being too focused on some new magical devices and my book.

I'd even gotten Draco to read some parts of it, and he was surprisingly excited to go and test some of the ideas out, which was refreshing. Maybe it would inspire a bit more respect for 'muggles' in him, considering all these things were learned from them.

I'd kept tabs on that, but what I was actually looking forward to now was the looming curse on Lockheart, or at least I thought I was. But, so far, there had been no sign of that kicking in.

Just most days going without anything of note happening, business as usual.

But, for some reason, today seemed a bit different. Snape was in a tizzy, pacing and stalking around his classroom even more than usual and his perpetual scowl seemed to have a few extra wrinkles to it.

I thought at first that he might just have an upset stomach or something until near the end of the class period.

Leering at the first-years, Snape loomed from his place at the front of the classroom, chin raised high and a sneer on his thin lips.

"Someone has stolen from this classroom, and I intend to find out who," He hissed.

The whole class was silent.

Snape's eyes swept across the children, scanning them for hints of guilt, I was sure. I just sat there calmly, knowing that I wasn't responsible. Briefly, Snape's eyes met mine, before he moved on.

After a tense few minutes, I heard the man mutter "It was probably Potter... that scheming–" before silencing himself.

I never took Harry Potter as the scheming type, so I wasn't sure what the kid did to make Snape think that about him. The kid was just a kid, a bit annoying, but not much more than that. Though, it seemed like Snape had a personal problem with him.

The lesson just moved on after that with Snape still watching the students with some suspicion, but nothing much more of note happened after that.

...

Sebastian let out an audible sigh of relief as soon as we stepped into the corridor outside of the potions classroom.

"I wonder what was stolen." He sounded more entertained than curious, but still a mix of both. Yeah, he'd seemed tense all class, but that didn't completely snuff out his usual attitude.

I didn't know, and didn't care. Snape probably just misplaced something and decided to blame it on theft, was what I thought.

"Maybe someone is making a forbidden, super-secret potion! So they took expensive, rare things to make it. Ingredients Snape keeps locked up and hidden." Sebastian suggested, "Or they stole a test's answers so they can cheat. Or maybe..."

I stopped listening to Sebastian's babbling. He was letting his imagination get the better of him again and only stopped once we were approaching our next class' room. Well, more of a greenhouse than a 'room,' since we had Herbology that day.

I didn't like botany classes, they reminded me of a bit of an annoying moment fifteen years ago. I really do need to be more careful about letting kids use magic when I'm supposed to be watching them.

Regardless, that wasn't my focus. Instead it was on how to design a magic rice cooker. You see, I wanted it to double with the ability to make potions, but for that I wanted it to have the ability to filter out non-dilute solids in the boiling liquid, but I had a feeling actually filtering potions would probably cause weird effects.

So instead I wanted to use runic magic, I'd made a simple bowl and put some water, salt, and pepper into it then I tried inscribing runes that would teleport the pepper-flakes to a little vial glued to the side of the bowl.