August 30, 1988
England, Cokeworth, Spinner's End, Severus Snape's house
"Aguamenti," Sensei's voice sounded with the now-familiar spell, and I felt water pouring over my face and body. Cold water.
Where did he summon it from, I wondered? I stuck out my tongue. Fresh water. Maybe he somehow 'squeezed' it out of the air? I remembered that those who could use the water element needed a nearby source, or else sealed water directly in their mouths. Especially advanced people, like that blue-skinned swordsman from the Mist—Itachi's partner—could directly transform chakra into water. Lee had told me how that Kisame, when their team fought him, created an entire sea of respectable area and depth right in the middle of a desert, dumping almost a thousand gen of chakra into it. That was roughly two full reserves of proper A-rank jonin. You could say he spent almost as much chakra creating terrain convenient for himself as all his opponents had combined, and yet he lost barely a tenth of his own reserve.
I wondered whether I had some kind of chakra exhaustion and that was why I had fainted. But from Sensei's explanations I understood that wizards didn't have any sort of reserve and drew magic from outside...
"Potter, I can see that you've already regained consciousness. Get up," he interrupted my thoughts.
I opened my eyes and sat up. Yeah... what a mess to clean. There was a whole puddle of water. Apparently he really had summoned an entire bathtub's worth! And my clothes would need drying too.
"Excuro." A wave of the wand, and I became completely dry. The puddle on the floor disappeared too. Awesome! Convenient.
"That is a household cleaning spell," Sensei explained, apparently noticing the thirst for knowledge in my eyes. "It removes dirt, slops, vomit, spilled potions, blood..."
"Anything liquid and viscous?" I caught the spell's main principle.
"Yes. The binding element for the spell is the presence of liquid. There is another spell, 'Tergeo', for dry cleaning dust, but 'Excuro' is more universally useful in household situations." His expression darkened as though he'd remembered something.
"What happened to me?" I quietly reminded him of the matter at hand. "Why did I faint? Did I run out of magic?"
"Magic cannot 'run out'," Sensei wrinkled his nose. "Unless you happen to enter some special magical anomaly. In this case, your body shut down after the strain on your nervous system from using magic reached its limit. Your brain gave the body a signal, and you fainted so that you would stop casting magic."
"Ah." I nodded. "So it's basically a particular kind of fatigue?"
In truth, it felt as though I'd deflated like a balloon.
"You are only eight years old, Mr. Potter. I'm surprised you lasted as long as you did, considering how complex your elemental manipulation was. Usually even powerful wizards, despite being able to channel a sufficiently broad magical flow—which is what so-called 'magical power' depends on—cannot sustain it for long."
I see. It was roughly the same 'illness' our Kakashi-sensei was always 'suffering from' after missions. Nervous-system exhaustion from using the Sharingan, as Sakura had explained to me. Our commander had received the Uchiha clan's dojutsu from his dead teammate, and unlike an Uchiha, his brain couldn't handle the tons of information flooding into him through the Sharingan. Nor could he 'switch it off' the way true Uchiha could. That was why Kakashi only uncovered his red eye in battle, and even then only against very serious opponents when he had no other choice.
Which meant I needed to train in this direction too.
"Is that why spells use formulas?" I asked. "To make everything shorter?"
At least, that was how they had explained the use of hand seals for techniques at the Academy. Without them, you needed such exquisite chakra control that even not every A-rank iryo-nin could manage it. Or you needed some special genome and an extremely strong predisposition, like the Uchiha Sharingan. Rikudo-sennin had taught people seals at the dawn of time, which was why he became the greatest shinobi.
"To a certain extent, yes. You've drawn the correct conclusion," Sensei said thoughtfully, touching his chin. "A spell is precisely a formula of magical will with a predetermined sequence of actions and effects. I've thought a great deal about that myself..." He stopped short and looked at me carefully. "It's remarkable that you arrived at this at eight years old. Usually even Hogwarts graduates simply memorize spells without thinking about their underlying nature."
"I just remembered how I 'summoned' the water when Uncle Vernon felt ill. It flew out of the kitchen tap and hit him. But that took much longer than it took you to say the spell agua... agau..."
"Aguamenti," Sensei prompted.
"Right, that 'Aguamenti'," I repeated correctly. "See, wizards aren't idiots. If you have to use your own power to call that water and pour it somewhere, it takes time. It's one thing when you have an 'elemental outburst' and everything sort of happens on its own, and another when you're trying to control the process. Take simple levitation. If I want to pull something toward myself, first I have to think about what I want to pull. Then concentrate on that object, sort of 'feel' it, imagine taking it with an invisible hand, make sure it flies toward me, and make sure it lands exactly in my hand. That's a lot of actions to control at once while channeling magical influence through yourself! I'm certain you use some kind of formula to combine everything I just listed. Otherwise magic wouldn't be nearly so wonderful."
The corners of Snape-sensei's lips curved upward, and his black eyes sparkled with amusement.
"It's called a Summoning Charm. More generally, if we simplify considerably, magic is rather like a dog. A young wizard gets a puppy. The puppy may tear up shoes in the hallway, urinate somewhere, misbehave, knock things over. It doesn't yet understand how to behave, but it senses its owner's mood and adapts to the world through that. Then the puppy grows, and the owner teaches it various commands: 'Fetch', 'Attack', 'Heel', 'Place'. Short commands contain entire chains of instructions telling the dog what to do. That is achieved through long training by both owner and pet for every command."
"And how many commands the dog learns depends on how much effort the owner makes?" I finished his thought.
"Yes." Sensei smiled slightly again. "And at some point the dog may become so intelligent that it follows its owner's intentions before the command is even spoken aloud."
That was almost like Kiba and his ninja dog Akamaru. They understood each other almost telepathically. That gave me another thought.
"And... if we compare magic to a dog, then everyone's is different? Meaning some dogs are smarter and easier to train, while others aren't..."
"Believe me, Harry," Sensei snorted, calling me by my first name, "even the simplest mongrel can be taught tricks if enough effort is applied. Just as the most intelligent purebred can be ruined by indulging its whims and providing no discipline. But of course, if dogs of different categories are trained equally well, the more specialized breeds will have advantages because of their breed traits. Dogs are bred for different purposes too: hunting dogs, fighting dogs, decorative breeds, water-rescue dogs, and so on."
"And how does that apply to wizards?" I asked.
"There are branches of magic toward which certain families and bloodlines have traditionally gravitated. Some particular Gift appears among them more often. The Gift of Divination, for example. But that doesn't mean someone from another family cannot develop the same gift. My mother was quite good at potion-making. Yours, incidentally, was too..." He fell silent and looked away.
"Was she your friend?" I asked quietly. Then, remembering the problem with the missing photographs and my own guesses, I decided to ask, "Do you perhaps still have a photo of her? I'd like to know what she looked like."
"You don't know?" Sensei looked astonished. Both his eyebrows rose slightly.
"The thing is, Aunt Petunia doesn't have a single photograph or personal belonging left from her sister. She said that before I was born, Lily took absolutely everything—her belongings and her photographs—as though she wanted to disappear from their lives. And maybe she cast some kind of spell that distorted their memories. So that... Aunt Petunia wouldn't grieve for her. But that's just something I guessed myself. Aunt Petunia loved her little sister very much."
"I'll look..." Snape-sensei finally yielded under my pressure. "I... need to go to the laboratory..."
"There are still several pages left in the 'Scroll...'" I reminded him. "And tomorrow already..."
"Yes." He rubbed his temple. "Then go to the library and start translating. I'll join you shortly."
I could see that Sensei was in turmoil, so I didn't keep hovering around him and went upstairs. It made me terribly sad too when I thought that I would probably never see any of my friends again. I had died there. And many of my comrades had died with me. So stupid. So painfully stupid.
Hinata's smile. She had said she didn't regret it. Stupid girl! And Sakura? She could have become the next Hokage... Why had everything turned out that way? Because of me, or because of Sasuke? Maybe because of both of us, because she could see that neither of us could be saved anymore... It hurt so much that I wanted to destroy the entire world. It was a good thing I'd thrown the others far away. I hoped they were still alive.
Don't think about it! Here, thoughts are tied directly to actions! Frost was already spreading across the table. I'd only just had every system in my body shut down. No need to make Snape-sensei angry by ruining an outrageously expensive rare book.
It was time to let go of my past and concentrate on the present. Maybe I could avoid screwing up the life of this world's Chosen One of Fate the way I'd screwed up my own.
Whoa! There was only one potion on all five remaining pages—or rather, another ointment. What, did it take a year to prepare? Would the sakura have to shed petals from spring all the way to the next spring, or would there be some timing instruction involving a stone being polished by a mountain stream? All right, the name: 'Seiketsuhontai'. Painfully complicated composition for a simple cleansing ointment. What exactly did it clean that required five pages of description and ingredients? Ah, here was the effect description.
'An ointment for rubbing into the body, dissolving scars, pits, acne, boils, fungi on the body...' Wow, fungi, horrifying! '...caused by curses and magical diseases, healing bites and scratches from magical creatures...'
And a whole pile of other things filling five entire columns. Right, understood: a super-ointment 'for everything'. Except brewing it, by the look of things, would be far from simple...
I wondered whether it would work against the stupid scar on my forehead too. Hmm. At a glance, without reading closely, it used around sixty ingredients. Holy crap. How had anyone even invented it? Had everything in the laboratory accidentally gotten mixed together? How much would an ointment like that even cost?
"Why are you puffing so indignantly?" Snape-sensei entered the library, calm and cold as usual.
"The last recipe, this 'ointment for everything', offended me a little, sir," I answered.
"Ah, the one with a great many ingredients?" he understood. "And what do you mean by 'for everything'?"
"It removes everything from pimples to bites from magical creatures and all kinds of magical marks. The name translates as 'Pure Body'. I suppose if you smear it on yourself, you'll have skin like a baby's even if your whole body was covered in scars after meeting a tiger. Oh..." I shouldn't have mentioned a tiger. They didn't live in England. I'd simply seen a guy in the hospital once who'd been mauled by one...
"Hmm. Let's begin the translation," Sensei said, fortunately failing to notice my slip.
My mood improved. Or maybe my strength had simply recovered already.
"So. 'Seiketsuhontai', or 'Pure Body', is prepared on a base of spring water taken from the summit of..."