To pretty much every wizard out there, the Patronus Charm comes with a big, bold label:
"Super-famous high-level spell. Also the ultimate 'get-the-hell-away-from-me' button for anything that goes bump in the dark."
Its claim to fame? It turns Dementors into sad little clouds that can't handle a hug of pure happiness. One silver stag later and you're basically untouchable.
But if you've ever gone full nerd on soul magic (like, "lock yourself in the Restricted Section with twelve cups of coffee" level), you start to see the Patronus for what it really is: a straight-up miracle.
And right now, Dylan was watching that miracle do things no textbook ever bothered to mention.
The snidget he'd conjured wasn't just chilling. It was glowing like a gentle moon, sending out soft silver ripples that made every shadow-creature in the Black Lake perk up like kids hearing the ice-cream truck.
Grindylows stopped thrashing and drifted closer. Bowtruckles inched along like they were on a conveyor belt of good vibes. Even the kelp just… started swaying happier.
Dylan knew why. A Patronus isn't just light—it's the happiest, purest chunk of your soul turned inside-out and set free. Normal creatures feel that and think, "Yo, I wanna hang." Dementors feel it and basically blue-screen.
To test the limits, Dylan fed the snidget a little extra juice.
The silver went nuclear (still soft, never harsh) and suddenly the whole lake lit up like a Disney musical. Schools of silver fish-shadows zipped over. A giant squid the size of a bus paused, waved a curious tentacle, then politely noped back into the dark.
Dylan's brain went full mad-scientist: Okay, but what happens if I spike this thing with dark magic?
He carefully threaded a ribbon of silver-black energy into the snidget.
Nothing exploded. The light actually got brighter, warmer.
And then the lake lost its damn mind in the best way.
Plants shot out tiny green threads that hooked straight into the Patronus like USB cables. Fish grew silver filaments. Even the merpeople, grindylows, and bowtruckles sprouted little hesitant strings (like they weren't sure if they were allowed to plug in yet).
Dylan felt his own magic flowing both ways, steady and calm.
He cut the feed.
The snidget faded into a faint ghost of itself, but it didn't vanish. It just… hovered. And every single one of those new threads stayed connected, glowing soft and shaky like fairy-light Christmas strings.
Dylan poked one with his mind. Barely any juice, but definitely there.
"This is all kinda mind-blowing," he muttered to himself, grinning like a kid who just hacked the Matrix.
Because here's the tea: a Patronus is literally your soul wearing a costume made of happy memories. Out here in the shadow-lake (no rules, no Ministry, no physics), that raw soul-energy was talking directly to every other soul-echo floating around.
Then he had the galaxy-brain moment.
What if I hit them with other soul-adjacent spells?
First thought: Avada Kedavra.
Tried it. Nothing. This place said "hard pass" to instant-death vibes.
Second thought: the Happiness Charm (Riddikulus on steroids, basically).
Dylan locked onto the merpeople shadow and whispered, "Gaudium Praesens!"
Pink sparkles exploded everywhere.
The merpeople shadow started break-dancing. Actual humming poured out (hundreds of voices at once, messy but unmistakably the same tune from the golden egg). They were throwing a full-on underwater rave.
Dylan amped it with regular magic: the dancing got faster, green trails everywhere, pure joy you could bottle.
Then he tried dark-magic booster again.
The second that silver-black touched the pink, the whole shadow convulsed like it main-lined espresso. A single pale-green thread shot out, hesitated… then yeeted itself straight at Dylan's consciousness.
He could've dodged. He didn't.
The thread snapped around his mind like a friendship bracelet made of fate.
Next thing he knew, he was yanked into the star-room (that weird pocket dimension where new magic powers get downloaded straight into his brain).
Front and center: the pink Happiness-Charm star, usually the size of a marble, suddenly swelling like it was chugging protein shakes. Ten seconds later it was basketball-sized and glowing like a rose-quartz sun.
A gentle tug, and he was back in the lake.
New knowledge bloomed in his head:
From now on, the Black Lake merfolk are absolute suckers for the Happiness Charm. One wave of that spell and every spear-wielding mermaid turns into a giggling cheerleader. Instant chill pill, zero hostility.
Dylan put the pieces together and nearly laughed out loud.
He'd basically hot-wired reality.
By juicing the spell with time-aspected dark magic, he'd burned a permanent upgrade into the merpeople's collective soul across both worlds. The system (or whatever cosmic force runs the star-room) saw the new interaction, went "Oh, cool new feature!" and patched it in.
Which meant…
Every spell he tweaked down here could leak upstairs and rewrite how magic works forever.
Dylan looked at the faint snidget ghost still floating in front of him, threads linking it to half the lake like a glowing spiderweb.
He cracked his knuckles.
"Alright," he said to the darkness. "Who's next?"