August 30, 1988
England, Cokeworth, Spinner's End, Severus Snape's house
The two weeks since my 'gift' for two languages had been 'discovered' passed unexpectedly quickly. Just like that—gone. Translation of the medical scroll was in full swing, and of course I had been a little too confident when I thought I could easily manage it alone. It helped enormously that Sensei had already struggled with it before and had written out all the ingredients mentioned in the text, finding translations and analogues for them. Various names of herbs, unknown magical animals, fungi, and other magical rubbish were all new to me. His problem had been figuring out what to do with all of it—how to cut it, mix it, grind it, pound it, boil it, and prepare it in general—and also the timing, because the text often used metaphors and veiled images from our culture.
I understood the difficulty. Sometimes even I had trouble making sense of recipe phrases like: 'With all due respect to the horn of a green rokurokubi, ground to dust beneath the light of the waxing young moon in the amount of six momme, this insignificant healer must add oil from fifteen fun of tomaseri-grass seeds and allow this wondrous mixture to pass through the alimentary tract of a non-magical koomori. After ten petals have fallen from a sakura branch over one ken, the insignificant one must, without losing a moment, bloodlessly interrupt the creature's life. Remove the sorrowful heart of the koomori together with the stomach and liver, and then boil them over a slowly burning flame, stirring along the path of beautiful Amaterasu, until the healing ointment becomes the color of the depths of Yomi.'
And that wasn't even the most flowery and empty-headed passage in the text. Snape-sensei had figured out the fun, momme, ken, and ingredient names himself, while I had to explain that a heart could be 'sorrowful' only as a result of asphyxiation, when it was prevented from beating. In other words, the 'koomori' bat had to be killed by suffocation six minutes and two seconds after being fed the mixture of horn and herb oil. Then the innards had to be boiled while stirring clockwise, following the sun's path, until they reached a uniform consistency and an ink-purple color.
In the end, during the three daily hours of my 'repayment', we worked together, and Sensei wrote down my translation and my thoughts on it. Things like how to calculate the time it took petals to fall,* or other details concerning the color palette of the demons' dwelling. In my own time and world, I had enjoyed the dubious privilege of seeing the world of Yomi in person.
Incidentally, I discovered that wizards used much more primitive writing tools than the ones that had impressed me among Muggles. They used sharpened bird feathers dipped into inkwells. Back home we used brushes instead—softer and more agile, easy for drawing even complicated hieroglyphs in a small space—while a quill was very stiff and unfamiliar by comparison. I asked Sensei why he didn't use a ballpoint pen, and even showed him one Dudley-kun had given me. Sensei replied that certain potions could be added to his ink—for example, to make writing impossible to wash away, or readable only by the person who had written it, or readable by anyone but impossible to copy with magic. A ballpoint pen was suitable only for insignificant notes or lecture notes.
I was impressed. Yes, secrecy was very important in the magical world too. Probably any competent potioneer would tear someone's hands off to get the translation of 'The Scroll of Medicinal Potions...' that Sensei and I were making together.
I decided that I would definitely learn to use quills, inconvenient though they were. Ideally, of course, I would find a writing brush, but something told me that might be a serious problem in England.
Only a couple of recipes remained to be sorted out.
We were having lunch, and I was thinking that the days of August were coming to an end. Most likely tomorrow morning I would be sent back to the Dursleys in Little Whinging. After all, I needed to prepare and get ready for the local school.
"Today you'll show me how well you've learned to control your magic," Sensei unexpectedly broke the silence. Maybe he'd suddenly remembered that I was supposedly here for training rather than simply spending time with him. Or perhaps he wanted to decide what to tell Aunt Petunia.
"Yes, sir," I replied without arguing.
After all, my entire daily routine in this house was strictly regulated, and I certainly hadn't been wasting time. I got up around seven in the morning, did warm-ups and eye exercises, washed, took a short cold shower, and had breakfast. After breakfast I spent about two or three hours training control, then read in the library almost until lunch, educating myself about local etiquette, types of potions, or historical events and trends in magical Britain.
I helped with lunch, we ate, and then came the hours of 'repayment'. At five we had tea with sandwiches, and afterward Sensei allowed me to help in the laboratory. Dinner was around eight. After dinner I did control training combined with strength training. Usually the second training session 'floated' around the schedule, because sometimes Sensei called me to help in the lab before dinner and sometimes after. If he didn't call me at all, I read books. Before bed I took a bath and went to sleep at around half past ten.
I was forbidden to go outside. Snape-sensei said he had no intention of searching all over Cokeworth for me, but I suspected there were other reasons too. Maybe he simply didn't want to be 'seen' with me anywhere. He was a spy, after all, and my presence and near-apprenticeship could reflect badly on him. And yet he hadn't refused me despite the possible disruption to Headmaster Beard-Bells' plans or the displeasure of the Dark Lord's followers, whose master's latest impossible-to-pronounce name I still couldn't remember.
* * *
We did the translation in the library, but Sensei decided to conduct my exam right in the kitchen. First he placed a glass of water, a feather, a candle in a candlestick, and a small pot of soil on the dining table. He buried a bean in the soil.
Under Snape-sensei's intent gaze, the candle wick lit up.
"These represent different elements: water, air, fire, and earth," he explained, taking out his wand. "Try to affect them somehow. Don't be afraid to let your magic go. If something goes wrong, I'll stop it. Begin."
I stared at the candle, so beautifully lit by Sensei, and suddenly remembered Sasuke. His clan controlled fire with masterful skill. Even at a young age my friend had been able to blow out enormous fireballs. In my mind, I repeated all the hand seals he used to form that technique.
Unexpectedly, the candle flame fluttered and expanded to several centimeters. It formed a ball. And that ball began to pulse suspiciously.
"Finite," Snape-sensei muttered, preventing the ten-centimeter fireball from exploding.
How interesting! I had used mental manipulations—commands that should influence and transform chakra into fire. But I hadn't even possessed that nature transformation back then! My element had been wind...
"Don't get distracted, Harry. We'll continue."
"Yes, sir."
So my theory about commands really was being confirmed: you believed in them and knew they would work, and they worked. I knew those hand seals were effective, and they had met my expectations even though I had only imagined them. I wondered what would happen if I physically performed the seals and tried to channel magic through them. Though, in some ways, the mental version was more convenient. One hand was always occupied by a wand when performing magic here, after all. I decided to use my own former element. Once, Captain Yamato and I had come up with a joint water-storm technique so we could counter Sasuke's fire element, whose power had increased by an order of magnitude after my friend became a student of the Snake Sannin Orochimaru...
Boar-Tiger-Monkey-Ram-Boar...
A storm spun up inside the glass and rose higher and higher. The waterspout reached the level of my eyes. I mentally pushed it slightly to the side, testing its controllability. At that moment, it felt as though I could sense chakra again.
"Finite!" Sensei eliminated the miniature typhoon along with the glass, and his black-eyed stare burned straight through me.
"I only wanted to see whether it would obey me," I began defending myself.
"I hope that when there is no adult wizard nearby capable of stopping you, you will refrain from experimenting with elemental magic, Mr. Potter," Sensei said.
"I..." That felt a little unfair. He was the one who had asked me to do it. Besides, I wanted to try a cancellation seal. "I wanted to try stopping my own magical surge. Otherwise, if it happens accidentally, I won't be able to bring it under control."
"Hmm..." Sensei ran his fingers over his lips, which according to my observations meant he was hesitating and having trouble deciding. "Very well. Try again."
He took out a new glass and, putting away his wand, waved his hand.
"Aguamenti."
Water appeared inside the vessel, filling the glass exactly to the mark.
"Control over magic is extremely important. This spell is used for practically any amount of water," Sensei explained. "But it is more difficult to fill a glass than to pour out an entire bathtub. I used wandless but verbal magic. With enough concentration, however, it is possible to fill the glass with water without an incantation as well."
I nodded. I thought I could feel something of the sort.
The water vortex worked the second time too. I released it onto the floor and guided it around the kitchen. Instant wet cleaning. Then, concentrating, I raised the vortex above the sink and canceled the 'spell'. Not particularly clean water dropped into the basin.
"Whoa!" I exclaimed, but for some reason the world swayed and went dark.
"Stupid, overconfident boy," I heard Sensei's voice through the ringing in my ears.
Author's Note to Part 1, Chapter 12. Experiments
* Sakura petals fall at a speed of 5 cm/s in windless weather. One ken equals 181 cm.