Granger's hand shot up.
"Yes, Miss Granger."
"Magic is a form of energy, which certain living things can store and use to manipulate reality."
"Excellent. Two points to Slytherin."
Granger beamed.
"Magic is, as Miss Granger said, a form of energy that exists all around us in another plane of existence, which we call the aether. The aether does not interact with physical things in any way. The only way the aether interacts with us is through a thing which some living things possess, called a core."
Flitwick hopped off the stack of books he'd been standing on, walked over to the shape hidden by the silk drape, and pulled, revealing a strange assortment of four glass spheres connected by tubes. The spheres were arranged like a diamond with a large sphere at the top, two smaller ones in the middle, and one last medium sized sphere at the bottom.
The professor waved his wand, and the windows closed, dimming the room.
Flitwick pointed to the highest and largest glass sphere. "This is our core. It absorbs raw magic from the aether at a constant rate and stores it." The little professor tapped his wand to the sphere and they watched as a glowing blue liquid filled the sphere. Appreciative gasps filled the room. After a few moments, the sphere was full. It looked very pretty to her mind.
"The blue liquid represents raw magic. Now, our core is connected to our bodies, represented by these two spheres." He indicated the middle glass spheres, which were both connected to the top glass sphere, full and glowing.
"When our magic flows from our core into our bodies, our core converts it into a more usable form - what we call ready magic." He tapped the single tube which lead from the glowing sphere to the two empty middle spheres with his wand. Slowly, the glowing blue liquid started to flow from the first sphere into the tube where it split into the two separate spheres. As it passed into one of the spheres the liquid turned green - in the other sphere, it turned red.
Flitwick pointed to the green liquid now sloshing about in its sphere. "This is the ready magic in our body." He pointed to the red liquid in the other sphere. "This is a toxin produced by our core when it turns raw magic into ready magic. Our body processes this toxin and flushes it from our system as quickly as it can."
There was now only one empty sphere. It was connected to the sphere containing the green coloured liquid.
"However, it is very difficult for our bodies to use magic directly. Humans have a very high 'natural reluctance' - Something you'll learn more about in transfiguration class - So, to combat this natural reluctance, we use a wand."
He tapped the final, bottom sphere and glowing green liquid started to flow into it from the middle sphere which held it. Eventually the bottom sphere filled up. "And there you have it!" The professor jumped back onto his pile of books. "The magical system of our bodies. From aether, to core, to body, and finally, to wand. Simple!"
Daphne grinned. She remembered going through a very similar lesson like this with Lady Davis not too long ago, although Tracey's mum didn't use the beautiful glassworks.
Beside her, Granger smirked. Presumably, Harry had taught her something similar.
"Now!" Flitwick called out. "We're going to introduce two new concepts which will help us measure our magical power. You'll want to bring out your parchment and quills for this bit."
A series of groans filled the room, along with the scraping of chairs and rustling of bags and paper as people scrabbled for writing materials.
Flitwick waved his wand at the blackboard, and a stick of chalk lifted itself into the air and started to write on the board.
"The first is how we measure magic. How much magic does it take to cast a spell? How much magic does our core store? Or our wands? We measure this with a unit called the Merlin."
The chalk wrote MERLIN on the board and underlined it twice. Next to that it wrote '- THE MERLIN IS DEFINED AS THE AMOUNT OF MAGIC THAT CAN BE STORED IN 100g OF IRON [M].'
"Do all of you have your wands?" the professor called out. There was a general call of yeses and nods while a few people brandished them, already in hand.
"Good, good. The number of Merlins that can be stored in your wand core is quite a bit higher than what can be stored in iron. Again, you'll learn more about that in transfiguration." He waved his own wand in the air. "Generally, your wand will store between 100 and 165 Merlins, depending on length and wand core."
He looked out around her classmates. "Any questions?"
A girl she didn't recognise raised her hand. "How many Merlins can our body hold?"
"Ah, good question. The number of Merlins our body will hold under normal circumstances is dependent on our lean body mass. One Merlin per kilogram. The larger you are, the more magic your body stores. Does that answer your question?"
The girl nodded.
"Any one else?"
No one moved.
"Okay." He waved his wand towards the black board again. Again, the chalk floated into position. "The second measure we are going to cover today is the Flamel. The Flamel is a measure of how quickly magic flows or is being used." The chalk wrote FLAMEL, underlined it twice, and then wrote '- THE FLAMEL IS DEFINED AS A CONSTANT FLOW OF ONE MERLIN PER SECOND. [1 F = 1 M/s]'
Flitwick then waved his wand and two more glass apparati appeared on the desk. Both had a large glass sphere full of glowing green liquid that lead to an empty cylindrical glass beaker. The tube that linked the first sphere to its beaker looked bigger than the second.
"The system on the left hand side has twice the flow rate of the one on the right." He waved his wand and glowing green liquid started to flow. "See how it fills up the beaker faster than its twin? If these were real wizards, the one on the right would be able to charge and cast spells twice as fast as the one on the left. His 'flamelage' would be twice as high."
Flitwick looked around again. The sounds of quills scribbling on parchment filled the suddenly quietened classroom.
"Any questions?"
The same girl from before raised her hand again.
"Yes, Miss Roper?"
"What determines our flamelage, Sir?"
"Another good question. Take one point for Ravenclaw. We have several points in our body where magic flows, and each point will have a different flamelage. The point where raw magic flows from our core into our body for example. Or the point where ready magic flows from our bodies into our wands. Our core-to-body flamelage changes the most with age. Our wand flamelage, by contrast, is determined by our wand compatibility. There are some other ways flamelage changes but we'll discuss that in a later lesson."
Roper nodded.
"Now! Everyone take out your wands!" People started scrabbling again.
Daphne gave a flick of her wrist and produced her brand new hazel and unicorn hair wand. On either side of her, Granger and Tracey both had their wands in hand. Tracey had a massive grin on her face.
"The first spell we are going to learn is the lumos spell."
A few scoffs were heard. She raised a single eyebrow.
"Now, I know that for some of you, this is very basic stuff. But please remember that some of your peers have never used even a toy wand before. The purpose of this exercise is not to develop casting skill, but to measure magical capacity." He waved his wand at the chalk again. "The lumos spell is very useful for this."
The chalk wrote, 'LUMOS - PRODUCES A VARIABLE LIGHT BASED ON FLAMELAGE'
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