DISCLAIMER: Harry Potter was created by JKR, I do not own the rights to any characters, nor do I pretend to.
Rowena's POV. This chapter flows similarly to chapter 4, but I hope it is more interesting at least. Barely any dialogue, I apologize, but it is mostly Rowena figuring out some mysteries of magic. Some of it reads out like a monologue. Essential you get to see what Rowena does in her spare time. I enjoyed creating this chapter, I just hope everyone else does too. I have a feeling it is going to be a love/hate sort of thing.
Rowena was confused. It was not something that happened to her frequently, and she loathed these moments of weakness.
She was floating lost in her world. She had just enough clues, but not enough hard reasoning to come to a conclusion. She was missing a vital connection.
Rowena had just left the Azkaban library. She only spent a short time there after she announced her resignation from Hogwarts. She felt bad that the 4 founders were down to just two, but it couldn't be helped. Rowena felt as if her destiny lay outside of the walls of the castle.
Her stay at the Azkaban library was short. She has the place practically memorized because she has visited it so many times before; although she hasn't read nearly all the books. She knew exactly what books should contain information similar to that of… horcruxes. Evil soul magic… However when she got to the area of the library where similar books would be kept, she found every last one of the books missing. It was obvious too; you could see the spaces in between all the other books on the shelves where they once were. It was curious, very curious.
Since the information she was looking to read was not there, Rowena left. Not to mention the overly nice archivist who hit on her every time she was there. The library was full to the brim with testosterone; she could only take the hungry looks for so long. She has never let a guy touch her like the way they were thinking and she wasn't about to start.
Since there were no books or scrolls to be found on what she was looking for, that only meant she had to do her own research. Rowena would not give up that easily. In addition to the soul magic, there were many other things she wanted to research, but could never dedicate herself fully too.
First on her list was to identify the foreign, but benign, magic she constantly felt. It was not quite leechlike, but more like a symbiotic sort of feeling. It was hard to put her finger on it, but that just meant it was time to go into research mode. If there was one thing she hated in life the most, it was leaving a mystery unsolved.
Rowena arrived at her childhood home, only a few miles away from Diagon Alley. It was essentially her own house because her parents have long since died, and she didn't get along with the rest of the Ravenclaw clan. They did not like her scholarly approach to life.
The house was fairly plain, made from simple wood. It was what was underneath the house that interested her; a large carved stone cavern. It was designed to be a series of catacombs, but the plan never came into fruition. So the cavern was simply empty.
It wouldn't stay that way for long. Rowena brought most of her personal workshop from Hogwarts. Calling it simply a 'lab' would be underwhelming, it was many things. Rowena, after all, had many areas of interest. She was curious as if there is any actual magical distinction between fields such as charms and transfigurations, or it is really just a classification. Her interests were not just solely magic based either. Her nonmagical interests extended to see what magical effects she can replicate without the use of magics. In the past, she has had only moderate parallels with potions and alchemy, but she wanted to push the limits.
That also led to the problem of nature. Well, not really a problem in her mind, but when she took time to think about it, she was impressed by what nature could do and what everyone just took for granted. She wondered why it rained, why it snowed…
While Rowena isn't the first person to think of such things, she may be one of the very few mages to take an active interest in what some would call 'the nonmagical world.' Rowena was not blind however. If there was one force greater than magic in the universe, then it would be nature, if only on the personal scale. Magic could do nearly anything, but only if you had enough power. Nature could move mountains, but it would take hundreds, if not thousands of wizards to do the same thing.
The first experiment was figuring out what the 'symbiotic magic,' as Rowena referred to it, was actually doing to her. The first thing to do was compose a list of what she knew, and what she thought she knew about it, including theories and coincidences.
She had to think about when she first felt the magic. It was quite a long time ago she realized; around the time when Artemis Entreri first arrived at Hogwarts… In fact she now remembered their first handshake and she realized is when she started to feel the magic.
That got her thinking more about Artemis. When they were in close proximity the magical feeling was not as strong, but when they were separated it was. It was not very noticeable during the first few months, but when he disappeared into the druid grove she really started to notice it. And when he returned, and they shared a kiss… that was the first time she remembered not feeling the symbiotic magic around her at all.
It all revolved around Artemis.
Did he do it intentionally?
Does he feel the same thing?
Is he even aware of it?
Those were some questions that she did not have answers too, only Artemis did. But he was off chasing Salazar's son.
Rowena did come to one conclusion; Artemis was as much of an Enigma as he was on the day they first met, perhaps more so now. There was just so much that she didn't know about the man, even after working with him for a whole year. Just his name really, and some of his favorite foods, hobbies…
She then realized one more thing that she didn't previously connect to the symbiotic magic. Artemis came out of the Druid grove looking exactly as he did coming out- like an extremely young man. One would think that 7 years of living in a forest would change you physically, but he came out nearly exactly the same. He didn't age at all. She wondered how old he really was…
Rowena then looked down at her own hands. She was almost halfway through 30 yet she still looked like young twenties… In fact she looked exactly the same as the day she and Artemis first met. She still felt like she was her actual age, although there was no physical evidence to indicate that. She put it off as that being her mental age… although it was disconcerting.
She once again remembered back to Godric's plea for a family, and Helga showing the first signs of aging… and having to bury their childhood friend Salazar. She had too many questions and not enough answers.
Rowena did have something to go on though. She knew what the magic was doing, at least partially. Now she wanted to know how it was doing it.
She brainstormed a few ideas and a few spells to help her out. The first thing she had to do was construct a magical mirror.
She was no Archimedes, or Dwarven engineer for that matter, but Rowena was a fair hand at designing and crafting what she needed. She had to be.
Rowena made a list of materials she would need to make a mirror. There was already a forge and the needed materials to run the thing, and some raw timber laying around. Other than that, she had to collect everything else up above.
The main ingredient she had to get was the material that the reflective surface would be made out of. She decided on silver.
Normally magic could be used for this sort of thing, but when experimenting with new ideas it is imperative to cut out as many outside variables as possible. External magic is one such variable. That doesn't mean she couldn't use magic at all, just the mirror could not be made out of magic, but magic could and would be used to make it.
When Rowena had all the materials she needed, she wasted no time in setting up the mold that would be used to create the large mirror. She had a last minute brainstorm and decided to create the mirror using the natural stone that was all around her.
She picked out a random spot of stone and precisely carved a large rectangle out of it using a self crafted stone slicing spell that was a variation of a slicing hex.
Rowena then went over to the forge section of the cavern. She made sure the ventilation hole was unclogged before she started up the fire, using magic to speed up the process. She located a suitable crucible and cast strengthening charms on it before putting a few ingots of silver inside it.
After the forge was running for a little while, Rowena noticed the wood fire was burning cold. The metal in the crucible was melted, but chucks of something else could be seen floating on top. She was unsure what it was so she added more wood and pumped the bellows to create an even hotter fire.
After furiously working the bellows, she had the fire at max heat. The mysteriously floaters in the metal were still solid. Deciding they were definitely impurities and not silver, she levitated the decent size chunks of material out of the crucible.
The witch let the strange looking metal air-cool a little bit before putting it in a bucket of water.
She decided if there were impurities in the silver, she better cool the fire back down once again to try and get the rest out. She let the bellows nearly die out and allowed most of the metal to solidify.
Sighing to herself for not knowing a specific silver melting spell, or any spell with enough accuracy for the job, Rowena started the bellows up again (with her wand). She got the fire to about the same point as she had it the first time where just the silver was melting.
After waiting until all the silver was melted, she levitated the rest of the impurities out and tossed them into the cooling bucket. All she had left was nearly pure silver.
She levitated the crucible full of molten metal and poured into the rectangular frame. While the metal was still hot she used a smoothing spell to make the mirror as flat as she could while still making sure the metal spread evenly, but it was hard to get it perfect.
Rowena managed to mount the sheet of silver on a sturdy frame and it mounted the whole thing on a wall for stability. It was very reflective, and hopefully it would be good enough for her use.
Her plan was to cast as many diagnostic spells on herself and see if she could separate the symbiotic magic. The mirror was there so she could see the results on herself more clearly, and maybe bounce some spells off it. Some spells did not take well to being used on yourself, so hopefully bouncing them off a reflective surface would negate part of that.
Healing related spells in specific were less effective when used on yourself. She added that phenomena onto her list of magical classifications to study in depth.
She set herself in front of the mirror, naked. Rowena was reminded that she was aging very well- not at all in fact. Her skin was still taunt and flawless, breasts still perky, no gray hair, no visible veins, no facial wrinkles, eyes still shining with youth. Still a young maiden in terms of sexual experiences…
Rowena took out her wand and went through her chosen repertoire of revealing spells. She went through spells that revealed various known diseases, both magical and non. She also used spells that revealed parasites and other animals nearby. She found none so that meant it wasn't a symbiotic animal.
She was now trying the various magical core related diagnosis spells she knew, and on the fly derivations. None of them worked.
They worked when she showed them to Artemis many years ago, but she was not getting a result at all.
Rowena tried reflecting them off the mirror but that was not working. It was not until after 20 tries did she see why it was not working.
The mirror was melting. The mirror could not handle the magic, so it was absorbing the magic in the form of heat.
Rowena gave a rare cry of frustration as she put her clothes back on. She levitated the ruined melted mirror and got to work on brainstorming a better mirror that could actually handle spells.
After several weeks of making failed mirrors, ranging from gold, bronze, copper, iron, steel, and everything in between, she finally remembered back to the very bright unmelting metal she found in her first batch of silver. During that time though, Rowena got very proficient at cataloging the specific melting point of the various metals and alloys, in respect to the flame intensity and the ratio of air to wood in her forge. She discovered that silver melted at a little less than half the maximum heat the forge could generate.
However, the strange metal she found took a lot more coaxing to melt than what her forge had to offer with wood. The metal itself was very lightweight for its size, had a similar sheen to silver, but was noticeably lighter in color.
No other normal combustible materials she could think of would melt the metal. That left what she was best at- magic. Normal flame spells could not get hot enough, 'incendio', 'flagrante' and the like, not even with maximum amplifying alterations.
That left Rowena to having to create a new and very hot fire spell and a method to put it out, be it a massive amount of water, removing all the oxygen, or a direct counterspell.
Rowena had her spell. And a nearly fail proof way to get rid of it, along with a few backup methods should it somehow fail.
She had the crucible enchanted with many layers of indestructibility. The mirror mold was also set up with the same precautions. It would not do to have everything melt on her.
"Aestuo coniecto abyssus plasmestas!" Rowena incanted. The want movements were critical, and very vicious looking; almost as if her wand was a sword and she was dueling an invisible foe.
A large puddle of blue and red flames appeared underneath the crucible. The flames were hellish looking, glimpses of imps and hellhounds could be seeing fleeting about, trying to break free of the fire to wreck havoc on the land.
It took sheer force of will the keep the fire from spreading out of control, and to prevent the monsters of dreams from manifesting into reality.
Slowly though, the metal in the crucible melted. It was very slow in melting, taking nearly a whole hour of sitting under the flames.
A whole hour of controlling her hellish firestorm spell, a battle that many people in the future would fail at.
A whole hour that the very hot fire took its toll on everything in the room.
Rowena had a large amount of ventilation for the room, but she could still feel the air being sucked out and the smoke devouring everything. She had prepared for that and cast a bubblehead charm on herself, and it was enough, but barely.
However, an event was taking place, while although not entirely unpredicted, she did not think it was actually possible. The fire was so hot, it was actually destroying magic. One by one the charms on the crucible were failing, the magic being used as more fuel for the fire. She had about 20 spells on it though, so she was not in immediate danger of losing the metal.
The metal. She knew what it was, after researching it of course. It was mithril, a substance that the Dwarves are well known for using in abundance. That was the catch. The Dwarves had their own magic for working it, magic that Rowena could not use because she was a human. They did not have to engage in a battle of wills against a spell of their own creation like she had to. She also did not have the luxury of being able to walk down into the Dwarven Kingdom like Artemis managed.
Seeing that the metal was all liquefied, she hastily cast the counterspell to her firestorm. It wasn't so much as a direct counter spell like a dispel, but it was guaranteed to get rid of the fire every time. She tried very hard to make a dispel for it, but did not had any success. She struggled with the magical categorizing system once again and was determined that there was an internal magical difference between a curse and a charm, something that made them fundamentally work differently. But that was for another day.
"Voragam sepulchrum foramen!" Rowena cast the spell after about 20 seconds of intense wand movements.
A hole could be seen forming underneath the fire. It slowly got larger, and as it got larger you could see the smoke from the fire being sucking into the hole. Slowly the fire was being sucked out existence, along with all the fiery creatures that were struggling to break free of their otherworldly bonds.
Rowena stabilized the magical hole then got to work pouring the molten mithril into her mold. The mold held, thankfully, so she started casting her smoothing and spreading charms to make sure the mirror was as flat as possible. The mithril was a lot more resistant to her spells and it was quite difficult to get the mirror as perfect as she wanted. When all was said and done, she was very tired, but thankful that it worked. Now all she had to do was continue with the actual experiments.
After the mirror was ready and polished, Rowena mounted it on the wall like before, and stripped naked once again. She took a test shot at the mirror, and to her glee, the spell ricocheted off without damaging the mithril mirror.
She began her regiment of diagnostic revealing spells and nothing was out of the ordinary until she got to the magical core related ones, and this time they worked when they reflected off the mirror.
The first one she used was the energy level revealing one, to determine if someone is suffering from magical exhaustion. Her aura was glowing a very light blue, a lot lighter than the last time she had the spell performed on her. She was surprised, that meant her magic was still getting stronger.
Rowena was more surprised however, when she noticed a faint golden glow also. The golden ring was on the outside of the aura, and not the inside. It was not enough proof that it was not her own magic that was emitting the golden aura, so she had to think of another way to tell the difference.
She tried another spell, one that revealed ambient magic. The air showed pink dust where all magic has been. Her skin was coated with the pink dust, as was the air around her, and the mirror. The pink dust was specific to her magical signature. Everyone else nearby should turn up in a different color.
Rowena was unsure what it meant, and was not ready to come to a conclusion about that test.
She made a slight on-the-go modification to the aura spell, combining it with her own magical signature from the last spell. The only aura that appeared was now the faint golden glow, and it was not being emitted from her own magical core.
She huffed in annoyance.
Artemis. His was the only core that she knew of that had a golden color. Rowena deduced in the past that it was because it was tied directly to the earth, but as far as she could tell the golden aura surrounding her was tied to the man and not the earth. Most curious.
She was looking at the results in the mirror, when she noticed a slight defect causing an odd phenomenon. The mirror had a slight bubble concavity in a few spots. When she got close enough to one of the defects with the aura spell on, she saw that the aura was emitting many colors and not just the gold onto the ground. She saw reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, indigos and violets blended on the ground. The reds took up about 80% of the color while all the others were just little slices. She was unsure what it meant, but had an idea on how to examine it in depth.
Rowena went over to her workbench, still naked, and got to work on her idea. She conjured a large chunk a large chunk of glass. She made one side completely flat, and made the other side angled. She crafted a revolutionary triangular glass prism. The conjuration was small enough that it should never disappear, unlike if she tried conjuring a large mirror. Her results from testing would remain unbiased as long she used the same piece of glass.
She cast the diagnostic spell once again, and brought the prism to the edge of the aura. Sure enough, the golden aura was split up into an unequal amount of colors.
Rowena got out her journal and wrote the results down with haste. She has never read about something like this, ever. She inadvertently made a ground breaking discovery in the field of theoretical magics and wanted to record everything. She measured the spacing in the colors, the distance she stood from the prism, and the distance from the prism to the ground.
The next step was to repeat the prism steps on other magical auras. Rowena wanted to test it right away on actual spells, but she chucked that idea out the window. A spell would destroy the prism instead of passing through the glass. She would need some sort of magical glass for that to work, similar to how she had to use the magical metal mithril instead of silver. However, there was no such thing as far as she knew. Rowena could develop her own, but she was on the verge of a breakthrough and did not want to waste time at the moment.
Rowena reversed the diagnosis spell to reveal only her aura, and not the foreign one. When the aura passed through the prism, the same exact color spread was emitted on the floor, down to the smallest degree. It was shocking, but it was possible that all auras would emit the same colors… so she had to get other auras to test on.
She remained in thought for only a few seconds. Rowena could get another human to test the aura spell on, but that would take too much explaining, and school was in session; she didn't want to disturb them or get sidetracked from her research.
The excited witch raced up to the main floor of her abode and grabbed some enchanted items; an ever sharp-dagger, a self-stirring ladle, and permanently warm boots. She also grabbed a mundane rock.
Down in the lab once more, Rowena took the first item and cast the aura revealing spell on it. The dagger's aura was dark green, and the colors the prism emitted were a yellowish green. She took careful measurements of the color distribution. This confirmed that not all auras would give off the same light. She wrote down her results and also made mention that the spell on the dagger was an enchantment, not a charm, for future testing.
The self stirring ladle also gave off a green aura, the refracted colors were also a yellowish green, but the rest of the smaller colors were on the lighter side. The self-stirring ladle was also an enchantment.
The shoes gave off a blue glow, and the refracted colors were mainly of a pure yellow nature. Rowena marked down that the shoes were charmed, not enchanted.
The stone was for her to cast various spells on and record the results. She had lofty plans of recording every spell she could think of. First though, she did have to test another person's aura for complete results.
Rowena took out a large blank text, and wrote De re Magickaon the front. She gave herself a well deserved smile.
As soon as she smiled however, she had a sudden feeling of impending doom. She also had a sudden feeling of emptiness.
It took her a few minutes to place the reason for it. The symbiotic magic, Artemis's magic, it was no longer there.
Rowena performed the diagnosis spell and could not get any sign of the golden aura she saw so many times recently. She was at a loss, there was no logical explanation.
The only reasoning she could think of was that Artemis was dead, or maybe he was only out of range, or being suppressed, no matter the odds of any of that happening.
She cast the diagnostic spell on herself once more on herself, and put her aura through the prism. The colors were unchanged. She sighed in defeat and readied herself to go to Hogwarts to look for answers.
Rowena took the floo over to Hogwarts, it was the quickest way to arrive there, and the quickest way to travel anywhere in the wizarding world, but it has not really caught on with the general population yet and was very rare for a random town to have a connection. Apparation was not something she knew, and she had only witnessed it a few times in her life. Artemis did it regularly, and some of the elder mages of the council could do it.
It was thought that you needed an immense amount of magical power to pull it off, something she didn't have when she was young. But if the color change in her aura was anything to go by, she might be able to do it nowadays. She would have to research it.
The castle was much the same as she left months ago. She was greeted immedietly by Godric, who was lounging at the table by himself.
"Rowena!" he yelled jumping up. "It is so good to see you again."
"Hello to you too Godric. Been awhile since I have been here." Rowena embraced Godric in a brotherly hug.
"So what is the occasion?" Godric asked with a smile on his face.
"Oh, I am actually looking for Artemis…" She said uncertainly.
A contemplative look appeared on Godric's face. "It has been a few months… In fact, the last time he was here he was looking for you."
"Really?" Rowena looked astonished.
"I told him you went to Azkaban to research."
"I only stayed there for a few days; the books I was looking for were not there."
"Strange." Godric replied. "Artemis did tell me though that he was searching for Sighard Slytherin. He took some of his possessions for potential use in a spell. All signs pointed to Sighard being out of the country, so I guess that Artemis is also out of the country."
"Ah." 'Maybe there is a range problem…' Rowena said to herself. "Can you help me with an experiment of mine then?"
"Sure, as long as you stay here for dinner." Godric replied without missing a beat.
Rowena gave off a laugh. "Ok. The experiment is simple. I just need to see the results of a diagnosis spell on you under a piece of glass. I have been getting some interesting results."
"Ok."
Rowena set up the prism and cast the spell on Godric. His aura was a sky blue, with the prism showing a noticeably larger amount of yellowish orange than the other colors. This was a different result compared to the reds she got from her aura.
She was giddy with excitement as she wrote down the results in her book.
"I take it the experiment was a success."
"Yes. It shows that our auras give off different light."
"How is that significant?"
"Artemis' aura and mine both gave off the same exact color spread through this glass, although we have very different aura colors."
"What does that mean?"
"I am not entirely sure." She told him. "I think the closer the colors are, the more similar the magic is to each other. I need to see Artemis and perform some spells on him to know for sure. In the mean time though, can I test some of the students? I have been recording the auras of various spells and I would like as many entries as possibly."
She did not know what the colors represented, or what to even call them, but evidence was showing that she and Artemis had the same colors, and she had his extended youth. They had to be related, but the exact mechanics were as of yet unknown.
"Only with their permission." Godric replied to her question. "You can ask around at dinner. In the mean time though, let us reminisce about times past... "
Rowena was working furiously on her research once again. She had many pages filled with recordings of the different magic spectrums of various charms, enchantments, and auras.
She sorted every spell that had the same amount of one color into a category, such as charms. Every single charm had the same exact amount of mid-range yellow. Every single enchantment had the same amount of yellowish green. It was as startling discovery. It was the beginning of hew new magical re-cataloging idea; the idea that all charms share a common magical root. Enchantments had a piece of yellow in them, indicating that all enchantments are related to charms, which made sense and also indicated that charms were a major branch of fundamental magic, and that enchantments were a derivative of it. It was in the smaller colors that similar spells can be separately identified from their brethren.
Rowena noted that the actual colors of the auras had no bearing on the refracted magical spectrum, as least as far as she could tell. Or they at least had no effect on the type of spell it was.
She was concerned at first on how a person's prism refracted aura colors were related to an object's refracted colors. That was until she had a brainstorm while sleeping. Godric's prime color combination was yellowish orange. She was unsure what pure orange translated too, but yellow was charms.
Rowena had a strong hunch that yellowish orange would indicate a link with transfiguration, as that is what Godric was best at. That could, in turn, indicate that orange translated into conjuration. It made sense and meant that transfiguration was a combination of conjuration and charms- a link that no one has ever made before. Also, no one has ever discovered a link that indicated that a person actually had a link with a type of magic over another. There was no way to tell if you are born like that, or if it develops over time. For now at least…
Seeing an easy way to tell if orange was conjuration, Rowena cast the diagnostic spell right at the prism. Sure enough, the color she saw refracting through it was orange. She smiled and wrote down the success in her book.
She was unsure what her own red color would mean though. She had a primitive list of curses, jinxes, hexes, and potions she wanted to discover the major colors of. She had a feeling that some of the more obscure areas of magic were just derivations of standard spells.
The problem Rowena would now face was how to get the colors off an active spell, and not an imbued spell. She would need to stop a spell in midair… She would need to sleep on the idea.
The idea Rowena came up with was genius. She needed to freeze a spell in midair. Literally.
One of the observations Rowena made when she was pouring metal for her mirror, the hotter a liquid was, the faster it flowed. The mithril flowed very sluggishly at first, but after it was heated for a longer period of time it flowed faster.
If she could cool down an area enough, it should be possible to slow a spell down a little bit. Couple that with multilayered stasis spells, she might just be able to pull it off.
She needed to create a device in which to enchant with the freezing and stasis bubble spells. The problem Rowena would face was similar to the mithril problem, where she couldn't get enough heat. There was no spell in existence that could freeze a target cold enough. She was unsure if there was a limit of how cold something could actually get. She estimated that her firestorm spell was about 4 times hotter than the standard fire spell, so it stood the reason she could create a cold spell that is 4 times colder than the standard cold spell.
Crafting the device to shoot spells through was the easiest part- she did it out of conjured crystal. Crystal should be able to survive cold temperatures without shattering and could hold her enchantments. It was a simple affair, just a large tube on a stand.
Creating the spell needed though- that could take an extended period of time.
It was quite awhile before Rowena had an adequate spell made. There was not a single spell that could reach the limits of what she felt nature would allow.
Rowena did manage to create a cumulative spell though. Multiple instances of the same spell would accumulate with each other creating an additive effect.
Getting a spell that was additive though was a huge pain. Nearly every other spell in existence is multiplicative and suffers from diminishing returns. That is to say, every spell after the first creates a weaker effect if not at full power. (1X1 = 1, but .9X.9 =.81, .8x.8=.64) Casting the additive spell took a huge amount of power, and she just barely had enough.
Her alternate idea was to create an amplifying prism stone and refract spells off a rig similar to Archimedes's death ray. She did not have the patience or the wherewithal to go about with that plan though, but it never hurt to have backup plans, no matter how unrealistic.
The time was finally right, and Rowena started casting every spell she thought she would need on the crystal tube. First she started with a spell pliability enchantment- it would make spells hold better and be more susceptible. The next step was to cast the layer of stasis bubbles.
The idea would be to cast the spells into the stasis bubbles, hope the extreme cold would stay inside, and then cast more stasis spells once the cold spells were set. And then add more stasis spells after the spell was frozen in place.
Cast cast her spell. "Viscus gelus reprobum!"
The room got noticeably colder, even through the stasis bubble. She had to conjure some warm clothing for herself, lest she freeze to death.
Rowena kept casting it until the whole room was layered in a coat of frost. Her hands were shaking as she cast the sealing charm and preservation enchantments on the cylinder.
Not wanting to waste any time, she cast her first spell through the cylinder, the leg-locking jinx. She watched in fascination as the spell left her wand at normal speed, but went in slow motion through one side of the cylinder and out the other before speeding up again.
Still, the spell was moving too quick for her to get a reading. Getting a sudden idea, she cast the same jinx. However, when it was going through the tube, she hit the jinx directly with her freezing spell. She noted with satisfaction that the spell itself froze in place, but still hovered in midair. The stasis spell did their job of keeping the spell from crashing to the ground like she theorized it would. After all, if an object had no forward motion, that meant it must have downward motion if no magic is acting upon it. It was obvious really, if a levitation spell made something float, when you cancelled the spell, the object fell. It was not magic making the object fall, so that meant it must be nature. Rowena, however, was too involved with her magical research to take too much of an interest in natural theory, for now at least.
With the spell frozen in midair, Rowena cast the very familiar diagnostic spell on the frozen jinx. She was happy to note that she was only picking up the jinx, and not the frost spell. That meant the frost spell dissipated but left the cold effect behind, just like how a fireball leaves a trail of normal fire behind.
Rowena quickly levitated the prism to an adequate angle and was happy to record the results of the aura refracting. Greenish blue. That meant jinxes were a combination of two other fundamental spell types.
Working in fervor, she got right onto the next spell.
"Vegrandis poena" Rowena cast the stinging hex, and quickly froze it with "Viscus gelus reprobum!"
Performing the diagnostic spells, she determined that hexes are a base form of magic, their color pure blue. That meant jinxes were at least partially derived from hexes.
That naturally meant she had to find the other half, the green half. She tried 'rictumspempa,' but that turned out to be a charm.
Rowena was not one to be dissuaded for long though, the next spell, a very basic tongue-tying spell, resulted in the green color. After a few more spells, she deduced that greens were curses, and that jinxes are a mix of a curse and a hex.
Giddy with her success, she prepared herself for a long night of testing.
After many nights of recording the results of many spells, mostly benign, and quite a few nasty ones, she was preparing for the heavy duty stuff.
Her observational chart was as follows; Orange- conjuration. Yellowish orange- transfiguration. Yellow- charms. Yellowish green- enchantment. Green- curses. Greenish blue- jinxes. Blue- hexes. Alchemy creations gave out a rainbow of colors, as did potions. Many categories of spells, such as 'wards', were actually just standard charms or enchantments.
Rowena could not find a single spell that gave off red or purple. She thought that something like rituals might be purple, but there was no way to test it with her current setup. It would be very hard to test internal magic also, such as apparation. Maybe red stood for general magic? Since she was the one recording the research she could apply whatever name she wanted to red…
A most peculiar thing though, some spells gave off colors that were not in the normal rainbow. Nearly every healing spell had a light gray mixed in.
Her firestorm spell on the other hand, had a dark grey mixed in with the telltale green of a curse. Rowena thought that dark grey indicated a sort of magical resistance to being dispelled or healed, and generally nasty. She put light gray off on the other side of the coin; spells that were usually beneficial to a person.
The one thing that escaped logic though, was why she could not control what type of spell she made. There was nothing in her calculations that indicated that her firestorm spell would be a curse- a curse that stemmed from hell itself, if the hellhounds that threatened to burst into existence were anything to go by. In the past a mage would have to play guess and check with a spell until they got it into the form they want. Maybe with her new data she could come up with a new method of inventing spells?
Rowena had hundreds of spells catalogued in her book. The next few spells she wanted to record were nasty ones if used on another person.
"Crucio!" Rowena yelled with fury. The red and black bolt of pain froze in her device like planned. The prism refracted the roots of the spell, an equal amount of green and dark gray.
A sinister spell indeed.
Rowena had one more spell she wanted to test, but she had to be very, very careful. She had an idea that the spell might somehow be related to the mysterious idea of the Horcrux, and the soul, but it was just an idea in her head. It is possible that if she could unravel the secrets of the spell, all her answers could be answered.
Rowena had to take some extra precautions- the spell was not one you could walk away from if something went wrong. She set up a large external stasis field that was anchored to a large stone arch.
After prepping up the crystal frost tube, she took very careful aim with her wand down the middle of it.
"Avada Kedavra!" Rowena spat out in disgust.
The green arc of death soared into the crystal tube, and she quickly froze it with time-honed skill. She very quickly went about the prism test.
What she saw was unexpected. There was green, which she expected, and the dark gray. However, there was a large amount of black also.
The black aura was most mysterious and odd; it seemed to be almost alive. It looked like the black light was almost reaching out like tendrils into the air. The tendrils were reaching out searching for something, and slowly getting longer by the second.
Rowena had more important things to worry about at the moment though. The frozen killing curse was starting to glow brightly. And the glow turned into a slow pulse, which turned into a slightly quicker pulse.
Deciding that this was a bad thing, a very bad thing, she cast her backup spell. Similar to the firestorm spell, and the Cruciatus, the killing curse did not have a counterspell that she could find or create. There were spells to deal with the effects of the first two curses, but the only effect of the killing curse was death. And death is irreversible.
Rowena's backup spell was "Voragam sepulchrum foramen!" The hole had a tendency to suck anything in near proximity out of existence.
The hole was struggling to suck up the killing curse though.
Seeing that something bad was about to happen, she started casting as many spells as she could at her stasis arch. Spells such as strengthening spells, unyielding spell's, unbreakable charms and absorption spells…
It was a good thing too.
The vacuum hole eventually absorbed the killing curse, and when it did it exploded with flash of blinding green light. The bright green light seemed to linger about the room longer than what was natural.
In front of her, the vacuum hole was now taking up the entire inside of the arch. The surface of the hole was in a constant state of rippling and shifting.
Her crystal tube was the first thing to go. It was right in the middle of the arch, and it got sucked through and left no trace of ever being there in the first place.
Rowena cast sticking spells on her feet so she would not get sucked in herself. Not sure exactly what to do, Rowena did what she does best; observe and record.
The first thing she notice was that the hole spell had mutated when it absorbed the killing curse. The hole in the arch no longer appeared to be the same spell, and after a few minutes the intensity died down.
Rowena could no longer see through the arch though; there was something that was making the doorway opaque. She was unsure of what that something was, but she did not want to find out herself. Rowena cast her diagnosis sell on the arch, and got nothing but a black aura, with tendrils reaching straight through the hole.
The worst part was now happening though. She was hearing voices in her head. Voices she had not heard in nearly 30 years. Voices from her childhood, voices of people long dead.
Rowena then realized with shock that the voices were not directly in her head, but coming from the arch itself.
"My word! What have I created…" She whispered to herself as she saw murky forms moving about the inside of the arch.
They were calling out to her.
She had to resist.
Nothing ever came back from her hole spell, there was nothing to show that anything could return from this hole either.
"…Abomination." Rowena stated with disgust. "I have breached the laws of mortal magic. What magic can allow us to see the souls of those who have long since died? Nay, this is unnatural. Unhealthy. No good can come from this! I will seal up this portal to the realm of the dead, hopefully to never see the light of day again!"
With that speech which only herself and those who exist beyond heard, she set about cutting large slabs of stone from the cavern walls. Rowena fused them to both sides of the arch and cast every helpful spell she could thing of onto it. She set the last spell to be a locking charm that only her magical signature could unlock.
Still not satisfied, Rowena set about to packing up the entire house. When her entire collection of research was all shrunk and in her pocket, she set about to collapsing the cavern with the house right on top.
A dozen blasting hexes later, her abode was no more. Satisfied that no one would ever find the arch in many years, Rowena thought about what to do now. She had no house, but there was always Hogwarts.
As she was standing on top of all the rubble, Rowena suddenly clenched her heart.
"Oh my!" Rowena exclaimed. The symbiotic magic that she had no felt in a long time was suddenly back.
And it was overwhelming her. She felt as if a ton of brick was being forced on her chest.
That meant one thing.
"Artemis."
Rowena now had her destination. Artemis was alive, and she was going to find him if it meant travelling across the world.
She cast the diagnostic spell on herself, and was immedietly happy to see the golden aura next to her own. There was a visible tendril extending off of it, into the distance. She would follow it. Forget Hogwarts, Rowena felt like she was going to explode if something didn't happen soon.
Author Notes.
A timeframe was purposefully left out, but this all occurred over a long period of time. You will have to wait to find out exactly how long.
I know that this chapter drones on a lot, but it is very important. I've actually cut back on the chapter. I had larger plans for including other areas of Rowena research, such as natural vs magical comparisons, the magic that nature can replicate and such, and other pre-Newtonian ideas. Do not think for a second she is done though. The ideas that have shown up in this chapter will be expanded on in future chapters.
I did note one writing flaw of mine. I used 'Rowena' and 'She' quite a lot. There are not enough descriptive nouns in the world to keep an 8k word monologue interesting. This is definitely one chapter I am going to want to rework sometime in the future. I did spend upwards of nearly 20 hours on this chapter though. About 5 to write it, and 15 in editing to get it into this barely readable form. I have 4 pages of handwritten notes on the chapter too, and it was really difficult to get it to where it is now. A rework is definitely in order, but I want to keep the story moving. Sometimes originality comes at a price.
---------Please, if you find any really bad grammar or spelling mistakes, or inconsistencies, please send me a pm.
I also could of thrown an anecdote in the brief GG/RR scene, but I honestly couldn't come up with a good one, and I thought long and hard on it too. Sorry
-De re Magicka is a reference to the De re Metallica that would me written in the 1500's
-Rowena created the fiendfyre spell here if you couldn't tell. She got rid of it with a black hole. Rowena named it the firestorm spell. I didn't create a name for the black hole or extreme cold.
-Also created the arch that is in the Department of mysteries in canon.
-the prism was not refracting light, it was refracting magic, so do not write me reviews that I do not know the visible light spectrum. Rowena essentially discovered magical frequencies…. Although I suppose it is also very similar to a spectrograph.
-Reviews. I appreciate reviews, good or bad. However, reviews that do nothing but state historical inaccuracies in my story are not appreciative and add nothing. This is an AU story, meaning alternate reality. This definitely did not happen in the real world, and this is definitely not a traditional founders story. I don't care at all that JKR said that floo powder was invented by some random dude in the 1200's
-I don't pretend to be an expert on any of the stuff in this chapter, I am more than likely wrong on many accounts. My metal forging experience is limited to a mixed machining/forging course in college. We used a modern setup to forge a bunch of flywheels for miniature engines.
-The amount of mirror creating done adds up to nil. I am pretty sure they don't make them with a forge like I showed in the chapter, I think they use electroplating or something similar. At least in modern times. Do not post a review on how I got it wrong…it doesn't matter
-I've taken a few classes in physics, but regardless I am far from a physics expert. I know heating an object makes the atoms move faster, and cooling an object makes them flow slower. Creating an absolute zero environment stops all subatomic movement altogether, in theory. The idea of freezing a spell in midair with my idea is shaky at best, and I am aware of it.
The magical spectrum (I apologize if I got any mixed up in the story, it was very confusing to get them all lined up so it would make a little sense)
Conjuration- orange
Transfiguration- yellowish orange
Charms- yellow
Enchanting- yellowish green
Curses- green
Jinxes- greenish blue
Hex- blue
Alchemy - mix
The first 7 all connect to each other, with conjuring, charms, curses, and hexes being fundamentals, while transfiguration, enchanting, and jinxes are blends of the others. Alchemy is a mix of the others, while potions is a subcategory of alchemy. Warding is a subcategory of charms. Rituals, blood magic, and everything else you can use your imagination for. Wandless magic doesn't have a color of its own- the end results are the same as their wanded counterpart and thus the same color. Internal magic such as apparation, animagi… well you will have to wait and see if they have a color. I actually haven't decided and it is really not that important. The tendril idea that you saw in the end of the chapter is something that is going to be expanded on, basically it is a way to trace magic back to its source. The light gray/dark grey is essential a version of light/dark magic, regardless of what you use the spells for. Every story I read has different definitions of light and dark magic. Even in my own stories I used different ideas.
This system is far from perfect, it is really just a means to an end though, and sets up another plot later down the line.
Pretty much everything that happened in this chapter is means to an end. Keep in mind, this story is just beginning. I plan on bringing this story all the way through to modern Hogwarts era. Essentially, these first dozen chapters are setting the background of everything else that will happen in the story. The little thing with Slytherin is just a very small fraction of the story.
The next chapter is Harry's training with the shaman. This is the second set of training out of the three I have planned. The most I will say about the third training is that Harry will learn some of his namesakes (Artemis Entreri) skills. I don't think we will see Rowena until the chapter after next, sorry!