Chapter 48
"Um, H-Harry, is this r-really necessary?" Daphne Greengrass asked me in a flustered voice that was practically trembling with emotion — Daphne, who was usually unflappable, even sharp and cutting in her composure. All that boldness and resolve had evaporated the moment I wrapped my arms around her from behind and caught her hands gently in mine.
Oh, yes. The young lady was flustered — and more than a little indignant at the liberty this uncouth brute was taking, brazenly invading her personal space. Despite everything that made Daphne who she was, she was absolutely not prepared for this kind of closeness.
"Yes, it's necessary," I said, with no intention of retreating. This exact state she was in was precisely what I needed. "This way I can better understand what you're doing wrong, if things don't work out again."
It didn't matter that Daphne couldn't fully concentrate on casting because of my arms around her. That wasn't the point right now. What mattered was showing her that she really could do this — she just needed to push a little harder and believe in herself a little more.
"Now settle down a bit and… let's begin." I didn't give her time to actually calm herself — I moved straight into it. "That's it. Grip your wand tighter, slow your breathing, close your eyes, focus on what you want, and shout the incantation in your mind with everything you have."
"O-Okay!" she nodded decisively, and in the next instant she gave her wand a small flick and — she actually did it. A faint magical flame flickered to life above the tip. It vanished the moment she opened her eyes and saw what she'd done, but it had been there.
To be precise, it wasn't entirely her magic. Her magic had actually gotten in the way — it had snuffed out the little light I'd quietly conjured wandlessly. But that was exactly the effect I was going for. At the end, I'd deliberately extinguished my own creation.
"That was…!" Daphne exclaimed, her voice almost stuttering, squeezing her wand with renewed urgency and staring with barely-contained disbelief at the spot where the dim glow of a *Lumos* had hovered a moment before. I'd made it deliberately dim, in case she failed again afterward.
"Yes — you almost had it," I said, genuinely pleased, feeling the shift in her that magic needed. "Now you just have to lock it in and build on it. So let's go again, but without the panic this time. Slow your breathing, settle your thoughts, focus on wanting to create that light, and don't forget to call out the word in your mind. For now, that part matters."
"R-Right!" she nodded with fresh enthusiasm, closing her eyes and trying to repeat her recent "success." She ran into trouble again — the stubborn spell refused to cooperate — but I didn't let up.
"Again! Don't you dare relax, don't let the moment slip — you were this close!" I pushed her, practically forcing her to try again and again. Then again, and again after that, without any prompting from me. And on roughly the sixth attempt, Daphne actually did it.
The annoying little *Lumos* flame — the one she'd spent over three weeks trying to cast nonverbally — finally surrendered to her. And she didn't hold back. She buried me in an avalanche of joy and delight, throwing her arms around me in a fierce hug, then immediately turning back to try and do it again and again.
She only managed it every other attempt at first, but the gambit had worked. Daphne Greengrass's confidence was, at least in part, salvaged — and I came away understanding local magic just a little bit better.
More specifically, I'd confirmed beyond any doubt that the right mindset during spellcasting had a significant effect on the outcome — and not just in my case. It worked for other wizards too. And not only in the obvious ways, like needing joyful memories to summon a Patronus, or murderous intent for the Killing Curse. Emotions, feelings, and the right mental state mattered for any magic at all.
That was a more than interesting subject for research. Especially given my ability to directly influence my own emotions.
It was still fairly difficult and tedious work, for the moment — but the idea of someday learning to shift my emotions on the fly during casting, and using that to amplify spells many times over, genuinely appealed to me. I understood it would probably require me to become something close to a master of mental magic — perhaps even surpass that title — but for me, it was within the realm of possibility.
Which meant I had no intention of slacking off or giving up at the very beginning of the road. I decided to start with some simple experiments and look for relevant material in the library. I put Daphne, Ginny, Luna, and even Sirius on the same search. Sirius was looking through his family's library, which was actually even better.
The first results, however, came from somewhere I hadn't expected.
"Is that…? Supplementary runic texts for upper years?" I looked at Ginny with some surprise. She'd outdone herself this time — somehow talked our librarian around and got her to actively help with our little research project. And from what I'd heard, she'd roped in her older brothers too, without a shred of hesitation.
"Exactly!" The redheaded little schemer smiled at me with obvious satisfaction, clearly angling for gratitude and compliments. "And it talks about how the right mindset and strong emotions affect runic chains."
Ever since I'd made a breakthrough in my mental magic — since I'd started directly shaping my own emotions — I'd begun to sense the feelings directed at me far more clearly. It didn't even require any particular effort on my part. It just happened, instinctively, naturally.
Reading these kinds of intentions from the girls had quietly become completely normal for me. Though even before, my ordinary, non-magical empathy hadn't been bad. But I wasn't rushing to tell any of them about this new ability.
Let them chalk my perceptiveness up to whatever they liked. For now, I had no desire to share my secrets, even with my closest friends. They weren't old enough yet to keep them safely. And that was without even thinking about Legilimency, which did nothing to soothe my paranoia.
That aside, I was perfectly happy to praise Ginny for her find. She'd genuinely earned it — she'd managed to sweet-talk our cantankerous librarian, who normally offered nothing but grumbling demands for silence and warnings not to damage the books.
No, what Weasley had pulled off wasn't something to take lightly. Especially since she'd actually worked through a far-from-simple book on top of it — one written in a densely academic and abstract style, packed with specialized terminology and archaic Old English constructions. That was a common failing of local wizarding texts: oversaturated with technical jargon on one hand, and prone to wandering off into elaborate literary descriptions and abstract philosophizing on the other.
Usually it was justified, of course. Magic genuinely wasn't always easy to put into plain language. Though with runes, the situation was both simpler and more complicated at the same time. Runology was a fairly precise science, closely intertwined with numerology — which kept the abstract descriptions to a minimum.
On the other hand, Daphne and I had only just started studying runes. Our first year of the subject — which had begun in third year — was still largely indistinguishable from learning a pair of foreign languages, specifically their written forms. Plus endless memorization of theory, dense terminology, and foundational concepts without which you couldn't even approach the serious runic literature.
And yet what Ginny had brought us was exactly that: serious runic literature, intended for seventh-year students preparing for their N.E.W.T.s.
"Yeah, this is well beyond our level," I said, shaking my head after half an hour of careful attempts to make sense of what Ginny had brought. "We won't work through this quickly."
"Well, I did tell you from the start it wouldn't be simple," Daphne said with a simple shrug, not particularly troubled by our setback. "Magic that's seriously dependent on emotion and feeling is generally classified as higher magic."
At least we'd understood something. We now knew that emotional charge could matter a great deal when inscribing certain runes — particularly when creating more complex artifacts and runic arrays.
"Alright. Then we'll set the runes aside for now and keep looking elsewhere." I shook my head. "And if we run completely out of options, maybe I'll actually dig into proper runic study."
In practice, I didn't find that prospect particularly alarming. Runes genuinely interested me. I could feel it — this branch of magic had a pull on me.
McGonagall had mentioned something at the start of the year while recruiting the top Transfiguration students into the subject — something about how true masters of Transfiguration could weave runic chains into their work. That was how golems were made, she'd said. Like the suits of armor that stood as decorations throughout Hogwarts.
Decorations for now. But I knew perfectly well that if the castle ever needed defending, those golems would become one of the school's most dangerous systems of protection. There was real potential in that direction.
"Do you think you can actually take it on?" Daphne asked with a note of genuine concern — and genuine curiosity. "You're already training constantly, and we're already drowning in runic memorization. And now you want to push even further ahead of the curriculum? Are you sure you can manage it?"
"Not sure," I said, shaking my head easily. "But it's worth trying."
Enormous workloads weren't something that frightened me the way they frightened other students. I'd lived through far more intensive cramming sessions in my previous life. And now I had mental magic on top of everything else — which wouldn't just make the task easier, but actively studying vast quantities of information could itself serve as excellent training for that very magic. There was no reason to dread another wave of memorization.
Though I wasn't about to rush into any decisions either. Runes were fascinating, and I genuinely felt drawn to them — but Daphne had a point. My schedule was already packed. Overloading myself further might stop being productive and start being genuinely harmful, both to my wellbeing and to my relationships with the people around me.
I wasn't quite ready to fully transform into a workaholic hermit with a severe case of chronic overcommitment. So for now, I'd try to find information about emotions and magic somewhere else first.
"Well, if you think it's worth doing…" Daphne said slowly — and there it was. Something in her had caught fire, just a little, at the idea of going deeper into runic magic. "Then I could try focusing on the runes too. I like them as well."
She wouldn't back down from that now. I knew her well enough to be sure of that. Which meant I could leave the runic exploration to her for a while. When the time came, she wouldn't mind sharing what she'd learned and discovered.
And honestly, it would probably be good for her confidence too. My fiancée could use at least one area of magic where she could genuinely outpace me — at least for a time. Runes really were fascinating. Daphne fully shared my opinion on that. So whatever effort she put in wouldn't be wasted.
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