Chereads / HP: A Country's Dark Legacy / Chapter 38 - Spellcraft

Chapter 38 - Spellcraft

The following day, Sebastian, back together with Andreas, found himself in a new classroom, housing around two hundred students who were deemed capable of starting spellcraft, an art students seldomly learned, though it was said not to be too difficult to craft a small spell. Perfecting and strengthening, now that was a problem and many spells of the past were perfected by generations upon generations, because of which magic learned to remember them.

"So, how was your ritual?", Sebastian asked Andreas, who had become a lot more confident and taller in the last few months.

"It was okay, but a bit painful. Surprisingly I got a small gift, a closeness to transfiguration, like a magical slime or boggart. I can understand and feel its intricates better and the professors said, that getting some kind of ability similar to a magical animal is very rare!", Andreas answered happily, clearly being content with the result of the ritual.

"Nice, that's cool! So, I suppose you are even better at transfiguration now?", Sebastian asked back, excited by his friend's luck.

"YES! And I believe that transfiguration is not as limited as most people think! As of now, we can only change the bonds between atoms and add or decrease the electrons and protons inside of an atom, but what is we could go even further and decrease or increase the mass of neutrons, protons, and electrons? We could break the law of Avogadro and so many more! And I also thought about how we could try adding more electrons and protons, creating elements that we don't know of, though I suppose that is very difficult as magic does not know them yet, but if could bdaiu andkdsn, …. ….", Andreas told him and became excited, soon only murmuring incomprehensible sentences with a barely audible volume. To be honest, Sebastian barely understood more than the first few sentences of his rant, but that was to be expected. He was never a chemistry guy.

Andreas's rant was interrupted by an opening door, when a cool-looking ginger in modern clothes, but exuding the air of a mathematics professor came inside and began talking, "Welcome to your new class called spell crafting, I am Professor Neudecker. Here we are going to learn about the history of spells, how they were created and how they are created now. Then, we will be talking about the benefits and deficits of different kinds of spells and how to refine and strengthen spells. This topic can be very dangerous if done incorrectly and have dire consequences for you and your surroundings so be careful. I am going to start now."

The students nodded, and most proceeded to take out notebooks and quills to write down anything important, as this class promised to become very exciting.

"In old times, magical people just tried. They forced their intent on the surroundings. One might say that they were stronger than us, as they did not need a wand and could start doing magic like that, but as a matter of fact, their spells were crude and not very diverse. For more information on this era, I recommend you the book 'Magic of the Beginnings', found in the library.", the female professor started.

"After that, we started developing our languages. Through the prolonged use of the first symbols, magic was remembered, and they were able to write magic circles with runes on objects, their skin, or the ground. Again, not very diverse and a long use damaged the object or bodies in an unrepairable way.", she continued, capturing everyone's attention.

"Then, the first spoken runes were used and through trial and error, people were able to cast crude spells, but not everyone could, as it depended on their understanding, not that anyone knew about it. They also introduced the first foci, magical gold plates and altars, which they used to cast more advanced spells. This led to people developing. Seldomly, were there civilisations or singular entities that were able to go further and understand magic in depth, leading to massive ancient empires, which all failed in the long run, like ancient Egypt and Pharaohs, where every single pharaoh was a War Wizard, as far as we know."

"People dabbled with souls and what we suspect to be other dimensions, leading to massive wipeouts, which is why we suspect that there were civilisations more developed and stronger than we were and used ancient magic. Some of their spells can still be found today, or at least abridged versions, such as the three unforgivable, the Patronus charm or Fidelius Ritual and Fiendfire. More about this can be found in the book 'Magic of the Ancients'.", she said and paused.

"In modern times, circles became popular but were hard to learn, so we were severely limited, and they pose no advantage, as both ways brought you to wandless magic which is stronger. The old Romans introduced staves, staffs, and wands to the general public and there was a boom in modern magical development. Old spells were easily translated into wand movements and incantations and most became able to learn magic on a more advanced magic. Still, they had mostly no understanding of magic and thought of it as obscure and incomprehensible, limiting them severely. But magic helped and wand movements became easier with time, which is why many spells only need one tap of a single vertical, horizontal, or diagonal slash, and that would be all for the historical part from my side.", the professor finished and prepared herself for the next part, while the students talked excitedly amongst each other.

 

"Now to spell crafting: Earlier, they created spells through trial and error of wand movements and incantations, writing down the effects, until some basic intents were introduced. This is also why wandless and chantless magic was considered harder a few years ago, as understanding magic and why it reacts in which ways makes it tremendously easier to master anything. Therefore, we start with an idea.", she began lecturing the students on spell creation.

"When we have the idea, we start thinking of fitting principles, for example, the disarming spell, expeliarmus. We want someone to drop the things they hold in their hands. Earlier, it was just the intent until it worked, but now we understand that this spell sends electrochemical signals to your brain, making your body react in the way it does. Therefore, we have several intents, such as several regulators for the strength, and a few that tell the spell how to react and what it should do with the body. The specifics can be found in your books, but actually, you do not even need to be too specific as magic is semi-sentient and helps. The incantations and wand movements can be found in your books as well, but it is self-explanatory, as Latin and English were created through the creation of spells, which is why stupefy is so like stun, or why Bombarda is so similar to Bomb, which we also associate with an explosion.", she said and sent the students to create groups of four and go on to build an own spell in this group. They had a whole library with tips, tricks, and experiences to help them and several weeks until their next class would start.

 

-HP-

 

Two days later, Sebastian found himself with Nadine, Andreas, Theo, who had become a bit more chill, Johannes, a brown-haired boy with Jewish ancestry and who did not tell them his family name and was skilled in warding, and lastly, Sabine, a youthful black-haired witch that liked music and sound, while additionally being skilled at curse breaking.

He sat at a wooden table with the others, bent over a book titled 'Sprellcraft: Choosing a property', which went into depth about the different elements known spells belonged to and was supposed to guide a wizard new to spell crafting to choose the right properties, etc.

"Here it says that most spells influencing memories or conception are created on a bioelectric basis, or at least that is how it works, even though wizards in earlier times rarely had any idea in that prospect, therefore magic must have helped them fill in the blanks. Spells like Imperio or Legimency work differently. Imperio has been confirmed to be a soul spell, while Legimency seems to work in a different dimension, where our consciousness resides and our shields and defences are, though it is supposed to be closely connected to a hidden part in our brains through a tether.", Sebastian summarised his findings to the others.

In the last few days, they had discussed what type of spell they wanted to create and what it was supposed to do, and they had a very cool idea, stemming from Johannes.

They wanted to create a spell through which a wizard could portray his thoughts to another person, while not needing to be skilled at Legimency and Occlumency, as required for this kind of communication. But it was supposed solely on a biological and physical level.

 

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Please comment of errors or loopholes.

Remember, it is my first ff, so don't expect too much.

There will be chapters on Saturday/Sunday, depending on the power stones from now on.

50 = 1 Chapter on Saturday

100 = +1 Chapter on Sunday

200 = Additional bonus chapter