As the conversation between Habol and Daphne went over to other topics and showed no signs of stopping and Astoria excused herself to rest in her room, Julius also used the opportunity to let his friend and his sister form a connection while finally taking a look at Theo.
Initially, he wanted to actually find Theo as it was him who was asking something quite peculiar this time, but as it had been some time since lunch and it would be some time until dinner Theo wasn't in the kitchen and after a while of searching Julius still ended up calling for him.
Immediately after Julius called out his name, Theo appeared with the silent pop noise usually accompanying apparition, seemingly happy to have the opportunity to serve his master.
"What can Theo do for the young master?"
"I have a favour to ask of you, Theo," Julius began, "and this time I want you to know that you are able to decline it if you want to, I am not going to force you."
Unsurprisingly, Theo was confused about the idea of not doing what his master asked of him:
"Theo will do whatever the young master asks of him, has Theo disappointed the young master?"
"Of course not Theo, I just wanted to ask you if I could try to study your magic," Julius replied hurriedly, once again leaving the house elf confused.
Though confused, Theo quickly agreed and Julius led him into a nearby empty room, where he went on to explain to Theo what he intended to do.
Julius' plan was simple: With Theo's agreement he would enter the house elf's mind with legilimency before asking him to perform a few spells in the hopes of maybe learning something about the use of magic.
When the two began with the experiment and Julius entered Theo's mind, it was with noticeable ease compared to when he used Legilimency normally but he just assumed that was due to the contract binding the house elf to the Abraxus family and delegated it to his future self to do research about that.
Now inside of Theo's mind, he motioned for the elf to start, unprepared for what was coming his way:
In a fraction of a second the gargantuan amount of magic moving to do what the house elf wanted overwhelmed Julius and made him feel as if he was drowning before he quickly pulled back his mental 'feelers'.
Then he simply motioned Theo to stop and thanked him for his help before declining the question if the house elf could still do something for him.
Only after Julius had heard the pop from Theo disapparating, he collapsed to the ground and relived the short moment in his mind during which Theo had cast a cleaning spell, a f*cking cleaning spell!
And calling it a spell didn't feel right either, it was as if Theo had just forced his will into reality and magic had relented and made it happen and in a quantity that wasn't even close to anything Julius had ever felt at that.
'And that is the kind of creature present in almost every wealthy wizard household, the kind that gets treated worse than a slave on a regular basis in at least many of them.'
'If house elves ever stop thinking as they do about their servitude, wizardkind might just be eradicated.'
It seemed as if Julius really would have to do quite a bit of research.
...
Not wanting to sacrifice his time with his family, Julius only went to the library late into the night after everyone, even Habol, had gone to bed.
The Abraxus family's library was massive, filled with forgotten (or just forbidden) knowledge as one would expect from a respectable pureblood family.
Looking at the shelves full of ancient tomes, Julius felt a bit guilty for not spending as much time here as he probably should have, but he had mostly been content with learning the spells from his grimoir and a few more curses, additionally to some other training he received from George.
Spending as much time as he did with his family had its price, but that was one he had been willing to pay and until know he had not truly regretted it.
But this time Julius wasn't here for general learning, he was searching for something specific:
How house elves used magic.
As preparation, Julius went through the rows and picked out any books he could find that had anything even remotely to do with the topic, mostly those with "house elves" in the title.
Then he sat down in one of the armchairs strewn around the labyrinth of bookdshelves and picked out one of the books at random, before starting to read in the warm light of a lantern hanging from the ceiling.
And even though most of the library was shrouded in darkness and even the ceiling was too high up to be visible through the dark, Julius appreciated the, in his opinion, comfortable atmosphere.
...
A few hours later, Julius was overcome by frustration.
He'd skimmed through many of the books in front of him, but had not found out much.
Now he knew that house elves formed a contract with their masters, be that a family, an organisation or whatever else, that allowed them to siffon off some of the magic power of their masters and that this was needed because house elves were inherently magical creatures which, unfortunately for them, could not replenish their magic power fast enough if they did it the natural way.
He also found out that the contract a house elf formed with their masters did indeed allow those to enter the mind of their servants with ease, while blocking other wizards, explaining the ease with which Julius was able to read Theo's mind.
But that was just not what he was searching for.
Deciding that would be the last book for today before going to sleep, Julius took a large tome titled "The Preculiarity of a Genius Wizard's Magic".
He had originally chosen this one with the thought that maybe it wasn't that Theo was a house elf and this was the reason he used magic like that, but simply that he had such a high amount of magic power.
And this time Julius wasn't disappointed; already in the introduction the author repeatedly referenced an ability of the strongest wizards of an era, to bend reality to their will, not directly using magic, but just by demanding it and magic itself doing the rest on its own, something that sounded quite a bit like what Julius had experienced from Theo beforehand.
Reading the book it turned out that that just seemed to be the way it was.
Of course the author went more into depth about the topic but he seemed unsure of how things worked regarding this anomaly and only sure of one thing:
Once someone crossed the last threshold in magic, they would gain the ability to just will the world into changing and magic would relent and do so, but that it would cost an enormous amount of magic power to do so, which in Julius' mind explained why house elves couldn't regenerate the magic they used every day on their own, they just used to much of it.
It also turned out that while this method seemed quite disadvantagous at first, at least besides the quicker casting speed, it brought a huge benefit in being almost entirely unaffected or at least superior to other magic, with an example being the house elves who could apparate through any and all wards, just that it was apparently not called apparition at this level, but teleportation and allowed the user to travel anywhere, even to places they hadn't visited before.
But Julius was already far too tired to deal with the ramifications of this at the moment, so he decided to pause his research until the next day and went to sleep, satisfied of a nice and productive day.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
First of all: Thanks to Seeker for reminding me that I really had to update this fanfic.
Secondly: I just got my English exam back and I almost failed, so if you notice anything I'm doing wrong, please correct me.
And as always, thanks for reading :)