The room was pretty much empty save for the single cage in the center of the room that held a very confused but normal rat. Nick made sure that he hadn't accidentally gotten Peter Pettigrew as that would be quite awkward. The plans he had to free Sirius early were very dependent on that particular rat not being any the wiser until it was far too late to react. Technically all Sirius was in Azkaban for was blowing up a street and killing Peter along with a few muggles so with the rat being proven to still be alive he will have served the sentence and then a lot more for the crime.-
Once that rat in the room was proven to not be Peter , Nick transfigured his robes into a hazmat suit with an air filter and face shield. "FUMOS TOXICUS!" he said but stopped himself when he noticed the spell about to back fire thanks to his magical senses. 'Hmm , either the wand movement or the word choice were off.' he deduced seriously before trying a different set wand movements with the same word choice but the result was the same. 'So it's the word choice , perhaps toxic smoke is a bit too on the nose?' he pondered with a frown.-
"HYDRAE FUMICANT!" he said and this time the spell activated but was clearly struggling to be produced so he canceled it and tried other wand movements until he got the one that worked. Pointing the wand at the cage in the center of the room he cast the spell and dark purple smoke with green streaks in it began to come out of the end of his wand before creeping across the room towards the cage. The rat looked cautious of the smoke rolling towards it but that changed when the smoke actually reached it.-
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" The rat screamed the moment the smoke touched it as it's flesh rapidly began to decay and fall off and in mere moment only silence and bones lay in the cage as Nick cut the spell with a back full of sweat. The spell exceeded his expectations was a wide margin and would without a doubt be considered as dark magic for the inhumane way it killed those it touched. 'This is definitely going on the "break out only in emergencies" list of spells , dear god that poor rat.' Nick thought disgusted by his creation.-
He didn't like anything that caused unnecessary suffering and this spell clearly counted if the agony of the rat was anything to go by. Still he needed to be able to protect himself and kept the spell despite his distaste of it. Moving on from modifying the fumos charm for combat the room visibly shifted and changed into an empty one save for the book shelf in the center that Nick approached while dispelling the transfiguration on his robes. These books were on shield spells and he wanted to use the room to learn of them since searching the library when this room could grab the non-enchanted books was pointless.-
That was actually the reason Nick had simply stolen a few books rather than copy them instead , enchantments. Most of the books in the library were enchanted to be uncopiable via magic and as you might expect writing them out by hand was far too time consuming to be worth it. There were a few books however that the enchantment had been removed from or the enchantment had lost power leaving them copiable. The room took advantage of this to create copies of them for it's own use.-
The book shelf only had five books on it which was not all that surprising considering how well the books in the library were usually treated. The librarian regularly recast the self cleaning and damage resistance enchantments on the library after all , once a year in fact. This meant that you really had to try in order to destroy a book and couldn't do so on accident , usually anyways. These five books covered self defense charms such as Protego and even the highly advanced murus scutorum spell that summoned a multilayered dome of barriers around the caster.-
Nick of course read each of the books entirely before deciding on any spells to practice. From this he learned that most shield spells were created exclusively to protect oneself by cowards mostly. People afraid of harm but unwilling to learn how to properly protect themselves channeled their energy instead into shield spells to repel outside attacks. Nick found it funny how it was cowards who created the very spells that brave men use to battle without worry. He couldn't really cast judgment on these people however as everyone has something that they fear and the fact they did something to confront their fears was impressive enough in his opinion.
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