Finally the true schedule for the year was posted in the common room the next morning bright and early. Thanks to having asked the twins however Nick and his friends already knew that it was the same as last year except the times were different. For example potions first thing on monday had been moved to the second period and charms that was in the second period was moved to the first. This pattern held true until the forth year in fact at which point the mandatory classes were held later since they were busy with the first three years in the first three periods.-
In their place was instead whichever electives had been selected at the end of the second year. While most of his classmates would end up choosing specific classes based on which future job they wanted Nick had different plans. He planned to take arithmancy of course but also divination and study of ancient runes. That said he still needed to lighten his workload by the end of the year or risk getting overwhelmed. With that in mind he didn't hang out with his friends on sunday but joined Helena in the room of requirements where she had been familiarizing herself with magic again since she got her new wand.-
While ghosts may not lose their memories from when they were alive that didn't mean that if they were around long enough they could lose sense of what certain things were like. It like like how you are aware of what it's like to eat and breathe yet at the same time don't truly grasp it. You do it almost instinctively and forget the sensations with it. Ghost are like that except they are nearly a hundred times worse off as they can't remind themselves via the associated actions.-
For powerful wizards like Helena magic was like breathing as she almost didn't even need to think about it. That unfortunately meant that she had lost touch with how to control magic properly after getting a wand nearly a thousand years later. As a result she had been taking advantage of the fact she didn't need to sleep to furiously train that mastery of personal energy back to where it was. Nick was lucky in this regard as it also meant that she was probably the best teacher for him to train his own control.-
Unfortunately for him however she was a harsh teacher and made liberal use of the stinging hex if he made a mistake. "No no , you pulled too much that time , you are only trying to light the candle from here not set the whole thing ablaze!" she chastised him after leaving yet another red welt on his side. Taking a sip of wiggenweld to ease the aches all over his body he tried yet again to channel just enough mana to summon a sting of flame from the wand in his hand to light the candle on the other side of the room.-
This seems easy at first glance until you realize that the further away the string gets from the body the more mana it required in it's entire length at equal strength to maintain. Nick had to not only fuel the magic but also do so in such a manner that he equally distributes an ever increasing amountage of mana. This sort of training was hellishly hard but just a equally rewarding in terms of control. Despite not having succeeded even once in the last four hours of training his control had improved by leaps and bounds.-
At the start he could barely get the spell started before getting hit with a stinging hex and yet now he could extend the flame string to half the twenty foot distance needed before his control started to waiver. He had also learned an interesting fact about his fire manipulation abilities thanks to this training. They behaved like semisolid things instead of pure energy like normal fire. Admittedly he only noticed this fact due to growing irritated and trying to explode the candle. At first he thought it was just the air pressure that had caused the stand to also get launched but the spell wasn't strong enough for that.-
It was only after repeating the spell only stopping it in front of the candle and stand that he definitively saw that the air pressure could barely make the stand move a little. It was only after using the flame itself in a gentle manner that he spotted that the fire was semisolid. If he focused on it enough he could even grab things with the flames and pick them up , though while still burning them. He could only imagine the terror one would feel getting grabbed by a hand made of fire .
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