hwllo


*knock* *knock*

"Do come in!" the professor announces.

"Good evening, Professor." Harry says as he steps into the office, closing the door behind him.

"Ah, Mr Potter, pleasant to see you make good on my offer to speak whenever about anything." The professor puts away indistinct stacks of parchments. "May I offer you some tea, refreshments perhaps?" A wave of his hand causes all the paperwork to disappear via sinking into the desk.

"No thank you, Professor." Harry says plainly, taking a seat.

"Very well then, what did you wish to discuss?"

"I noticed something last year..." Harry begins, obviously uncertain of himself.

"Go on." the professor interrupts reassuringly.

"Well, Professor Lupin mentioned how even most aurors had difficulty using the patronus charm, and well, only at the end of the year did I notice I had very often also heard my housemates complain about magical exhaustion, you know, headaches and soreness and things like that?" He continues, seemingly attempting to downplay something. "And I realized I had almost never actually felt any of that myself, and I was wondering why that was?"

"Ah,... A very astute topic to start with." the professor comments with a hand on chin, eyes somewhat absent. "And I do wish our future discussions remain as insightful, but to answer it; do you have a crevice of sorts at the back of your head?"

Starting slightly, Harry's hand darts to rub the border between his parietal and occipital bones at the back of his head. "No-, why do you ask?"

"On a completely unrelated note, the headmaster knows everything that happens in all of Privet Drive." the professor states in monotone, a deep frown his face. "And I despise his choices made to deal with most of it." Eyes filled with carefully leashed anger bore into Harry's own. "So I would ask again, did that frying pan leave any invisible reminders for you?" Spoken with a placating tone mustered through his current fairly obvious emotional state.

Harry assumes an impressively guilty look on his face and casts his eyes downwards. "Yes."

"And there's your answer, then." the professor leans forward, much less restrained, but still monotone. "I would postulate that by permitting expansion and compression with less changes in overall pressure, the crack in your skull is negating the vast majority of observable symptoms of magic use from you." A hand travels up to his chin again. "Magic use doesn't actually cause tiredness, nor can magic be exhausted, but it does inadvertently place negligible but cumulative strain on the central nervous system. You see, magic has to touch the brain in order to find out what you want to happen. There is of course the psychic pressure of the individual to soften it, like when you say or imagine saying 'up' to activate a flying broom, but that is a lesser variable in day to day magic." Harry looks up at the mention of brooms. "Essentially, the brain excites its magical field until reality thins, magic enters the world through the brain, and interacts with it to find out how it should pay its toll for passage."

"Um, but where does magical exhaustion then happen?" Harry takes the opportunity to ask on a pause in the professors speech.

"Ah, right. Magical exhaustion happens from the brain being distressed by excess magic interacting with it in a given window of time. The magical field superficially resembles an electromagnetic field, and can thus affect the brain tissue, mostly by causing pressure variations. Now, that is much more serious than it sounds, and the brain always, immediately uses its own magical field to relocate these pressure variables to the rest of the body, mostly the scalp and face for headaches, but sometimes even the muscles and organs for soreness and nausea."

"Wait, so because I have a... my brain doesn't need to relocate pressure, and I'm immune to magical exhaustion?"

"Almost, Mr Potter, but not quite. The pressure variables are most common cause for the symptoms, but the brain is also chemically taxed by its efforts, so a measure of hunger is also to be expected regardless." The professor glances eye-contact before looking back into undefined space. "Something I feel no-one will ever notice here in Hogwarts."

"Huh. Thank you for the conversation, professor." Harry moves to stand up.

"It was of no concern, Mr Potter." The professor assures while assuming better posture again. "Good evening and do show yourself out at your own convenience."

"Good evening, Professor."


"You wouldn't believe the delusional shite Malfoy's been spouting to anyone that listens! I get the feeling he's trying to impress the Durmstang quests, but really that can't be the way to go about it!"

"Should I take that as you wanting to discuss blood purity, Mr Potter?"

"Oh god, please don't tell me you actually buy into that too, Professor."

"I don't buy into anything, Mr Potter, I study and research." The professor scoffs. "Remember what I told you about magic and the brain?"

"Uh huh?"

"Well magic doesn't do anything to stop evolution. Purebloods are fully adapted mages, halfbloods a three quarters, and mundaneborns halfway adapted mages. Only, here adaptation really isn't a good thing." The professor clears his throat. "Brain-mass can be correlated with raw magical power, you see, so the purebloods eventually grow marginally bigger brains. However, due to the fact that in the magical world, any problem you have can be solved with a carefree swish of a stick, pureblood brains have a noticeably reduced surface-area, because they have little need for critical thinking, and surface-area indicates intelligence. In addition, however, the brains surface-area determines how quickly magic can flow through the brain, which is a much better indicator of effective magical power."

"Professor, please explain?"

"Right. Purebloods have more brains, but live simply, and thus their brains have become simple, overriding the benefits of their larger brain-mass. The mundaneborn have brains fresh from the harsh mundane world, yes even with civilization, so the sheer surface-area they have easily sets them above an average pureblood in terms of power. And halfbloods have a sweetspot where they get both mass and area, easily dwarfing both others in terms of power when it comes down to it. On the other hand, mundaneborns tend to have conditioned limits to what they can accept magic can do, or how it does things, limiting their potential; while halfbloods almost always inherit what I call the philosophical zombie gene, which, if not corrected in upbringing, Will drop their intelligence down to the average pureblood; and the excess brain-mass of the purebloods is by no means unthinking, much rather filled with nonsensical whimsy that is the entire reason people think miscasting can occur. No, mispronouncing that word will not conjure a peacock when the spell is meant to wash away color, you were just thinking about peacocks way harder anything else, and if your intent and words and gestures do not match the intent matters the most by a massive degree. And on the third hand, purebloods often have legal privileges, while mundaneborns have the proper mindset of absolute wonder to approach magic with, and halfbloods can go for either."

"Ummm."

"Don't flip out on me, these sorts of things must be explained with the exaggerations or they don't latch. The effective differences I mentioned are actually much less than implied, but somewhat more than most think. Especially pureblood privilege, it's out of proportion to the point of not being funny." *cough* "But I digress, the purebloods fear the mundaneborns, for both power and foreign behavior, so they make privileged laws and adopt hateful philosophies to shield their petty egos and fragile worldviews. I would dare you to calmly explain to Malfoy, for example, that they have the notion of bloodpurity and supremacy almost entirely opposite to how things are, but I don't want you to get hexed. Mind that Malfoy doesn't seem smart enough to know how to cast curses."

Both laugh at the joke.

"Especially with wands though, Mr Potter, wands are an equalizer."

"How so?"

"Without wands, only the purebloods would be known for immediate feats of wandless magic, most halfbloods would stay with one of other groups, and mundaneborns would be known for ruinously powerful ritual magic. The difference of being able to impose your will on the world right now, and being able to inscribe your will deeply into the world with even a little time, and learning to do one or other. Wands take all of hassle out of magic."

"You rarely ever use your wand, Professor?"

The professor gives a knowing smile. "That is something else entirely, that I will keep close to the vest."


"What about wands, Professor?"

"Magical foci in general, Mr Potter. The wand is just an inanimate stick with no sensitive parts to suffer under literal pressure. The magic in it attaches to your own magical field, and then draws on and focuses your psychic pressure. It's the difference between shouting on your own, and whispering into a microphone with the speakers set on maximum volume."

"What about, motions, incantations, why do they need to be matched, and why can't squibs use them?"

"In order, it's the magical language of the wands and incantations notarize the dialect and tone of the former. Then there is simply compatibility, the wand is a microphone, but it's not a perfect one, and can distort your voice if poorly picked. And finally, squibs own magical field is fully, strictly internal. For a mage, the field emanates about 2.5 feet from your body, being at its strongest right at the skin, giving much for the wand to latch on to. A squib however, has the inverse, the magical field is strongest in their bone-marrow and organs, with only nominal emanations exiting the skin, too little for a wand. Blood binding does work, of course, but that's-" and here the professor gestures bunny ears, ""dark and massively illegal and squibs can't use wands anyway so why even try?" Bigots the lot of them, it works fine, grants them access to wands and only needs to be renewed every new and full moon."

"Wait, so squibs CAN do magic? Why would anyone claim otherwise?"

"Idiocy and fear, Mr Potter, idiocy and fear. Blood has powerful magic, and the masses can't have power." A deep, wholehearted sigh. "And that applies to those who would otherwise be fully deprived as well, because of some perceived precedent, I think." A renewing breath. "Squibs can mix potions though, and carve runes the traditional way, that is, they can do anything that doesn't require a wand; if they haven't bound one. The problem is that blood-magic is illegal, and no legal magical school accepts students who can't use a wand, so squibs wouldn't be permitted to renew the binding even if they could be admitted."

"O-kay. Damn, that's backwards."

"On the other hand, there is the fact that squibs can do a lot of their own kind of magic. Empowering the senses, reinforcing the muscles, promoting muscle growth, that sort of thing."

"Say wot now?"

"Squibs are magical too, stands to reason they have magic. I think the actual laws oppressing them came to be from a squib athlete seducing all the women his mage brother tried to get in bed, not too difficult if you're in much better shape and can demonstrate you have much more stamina, I would think."

"Errr-" Harry looks as if he were to start blushing at any moment. "Right. Forgetting that, could you teach me that sort of magic?"

"Seduction or the other kind?" Harry goes red like a Weasley's hair, and the professor barks a short bout of laughter. "Of course I can, but take note that it won't be easy or pleasant. Inviting the magical field inside the body involves some most strenuous exercise."

"I can do it." harry is quick to assure.