Flora's trial had provided more than sufficient reason for learning about dark magic, which meant a much-delayed trip to the library was in order for Hermione and Terry. They would be out of direct sight, fortunately, as they had obtained a pass to the Restricted Section for trial purposes, then discovered that Hannah had broken the enchantment on the parchment causing it to disappear when it expired.
"I do the same thing with every other form I've signed," the Hufflepuff had revealed. I shall pretend I did not hear that.
Once in the library, where the pair of Ravenclaws doubted they would be attacked, since Madam Pince had a way of stopping things before they started, the bushy-haired witch decided it might benefit them to ask Dean or Parvati if they could provide a demonstration of their illusion magic, as it seemed a good way of hiding, while stationary at least. It might also be a good idea to ask if they would join us. I know from Ron that Dean's methods are not the same as mine, but with Terry in charge, cooler heads might well prevail.
Having thought about her knee-jerk reaction to defend Flora, which she could not entirely say she regretted, she had to excommunicate herself from the group of cool-headed people she had imagined in her mind. I really should have done that first year. I can't even recognize myself from that time.
"Are you quite alright?" her friend asked, most likely expecting a response in the affirmative, as always.
"I'm just thinking about something."
"Oh, well, ask away if you have a question of any description." Well, it was not really a question I would ask you, but I suppose-
"Have you ever had to reevaluate the way you think about yourself? Sorry if that's a weird question, I know it's not related to what we're doing."
He seemed to ponder over it before responding.
"My parents were about as normal as you could get. There's really nothing to tell about them, except that I thought I would die of boredom," he started as they found a seat. Hermione cast a muffling charm. "I was slated for a standard career, same as my father, and everything indicated my education would follow that path; my friends would have to be made along the way, and I would be lucky to keep them. At Hogwarts, though, I adjusted to being out from under direct observation. It was a rewarding opportunity, exploring whatever I wanted in the library, but I decided I needed something more."
"What?" she asked, getting down a few titles filed under 'advanced magical theory'. I wonder why these are in the Restricted Section.
"I needed a purpose. At some point a few years ago it was kind of like when, as a child, you imagine being swept up into some sort of adventure, or some sort of conflict and everything is simple from then on. You don't have to worry about what kind of line of work you'll do, and the bad sorts are so perfectly evil, you don't have to worry about any kind of consequence for acting against them. When Voldemort returned, I realized the world has no shortage of conflict, but it's more complex than what I would read in books."
"I read fictional books too, believe it or not. I liked The Secret Garden."
"Why wouldn't I?" Terry asked, looking up from a massive tome.
"Never mind. Was that why you decided to join us?"
"More or less. I was reading in the library one day, and I looked up and saw... purpose," he concluded, if a bit ambiguously.
Hermione turned a page carefully, remembering some of the books were cursed. The two of them had divided research into magical law and dark magic as they had out of necessity rather than interest. Even three years after contending with the disguised Voldemort, she had no desire to so much as encounter the darkness again.
"I would say there's sufficient reason for most people to equate dark magic with evil," she postulated at length.
"Apart from the usual suspects? Do tell," the dark-haired wizard suggested without looking up.
"Well, apart from the fact that wizards who desire to stay within the law rarely research means to commit crimes, unless the research itself is a crime, the continued use of dark magic has been proven to change the user. That's in most resources on what we're researching, usually as a warning, though rarely does it explain how or why the user changes." She turned another page gingerly, finding a full-page illustration of a wizard who had contorted his lower half into a snake. The caption read: Do not attempt to violate the seven conditions of conjuration. "There are more than enough possible reasons for this, but the result is that only those who practice dark magic understand its effects on the user. From what I understand, the emotional effort diminishes over time, and I believe this may simply be analogous to a greater understanding of the dark spells, but there's another side to it."
"Most people can't actually kill without hesitation, at least not at first," Terry supplied. "They talk about it, they think about it; they can't do it."
"Right. Human beings are born with a resistance to killing others, the young more so than the old. It's integral to the survival of the species. Reasoning is rarely enough to get over this inhibition, really only the most strong-willed or well trained could manage it. I've read that there were wars, where at least at the beginning, the soldiers refused to shoot at each other. They would hand their weapons to those willing to fire, and if someone were hit, eight or nine soldiers would take it on themselves to take him to a doctor." She sighed. "With sufficient emotional motivation, however, even children can kill people."
"Children find themselves capable of quite a bit more than one would suspect, provided the proper circumstances. Every so often, there's a case of an extreme strength feat, and the Ministry usually has to send obliviators if it turns out to be an accidental levitation charm, but it rarely is. The muggles call it 'hysterical strength'."
"Well, yes, and that would be analogous to accidental magic. Hysterical strength is born out of some extreme need, and in many cases the subject is acting emotionally rather than rationally. Crimes of passion, then, would be analogous to dark magic, and to disentangle them, the barrier with the first is a physical barrier to overcome, while the barrier with the second is mental."
"There's another complication," the Ravenclaw wizard mentioned. "I needed to check something I had heard, and the Patronus Charm requires an emotional input, if of a different nature. Advanced Charms for the O.W.L Student states that a happy memory produces an effective Patronus. It may be that no one classifies it as dark magic only because of the difference in the emotional input, or the distinctions may be significantly more complicated than we suspect."
"I would venture that the difference is not irrelevant. A happy memory is not an emotion in itself; it is not happiness that makes people cast the Patronus. A caster not acting rationally, unless overwhelmed by happiness, would be unlikely to succeed." I really need more information one way or another. I should have learned to use the charm last year, when we went to Azkaban, but it's supposed to be a fifth-year spell, we were surprised with the trip, and I was busy with other research at the time. "I'm not sure there is any non-magical analogy for the charm."
They continued to read for a moment after Terry agreed that if the Patronus Charm could be counted as dark magic, it was a far cry from the killing curse. The barrier to cast it was surmounted differently, suggesting a different barrier. Hermione could not help but feel as if everything they had said was written in a book somewhere, as it all seemed so simple when they discussed it, but thus far she had not seen it written. Publishers likely err on the side of caution with anything that might be a resource on dark magic, especially something particularly destructive. From what little I know of Fiendfyre, it seems unlikely there is a book anywhere in this library with instructions on how to perform it. She remembered the old families of Britain occasionally had extensive collections, which was quite possibly where the Death Eaters learned the dark magic they occasionally demonstrated. It was doubtful the two of them would ever read through those libraries, but it was starting to seem like the only way they could obtain more knowledge of dark magic, which it seemed they would need.
"Hermione, would you prefer to learn a standard dark spell or the Patronus?" her friend asked at length.
"Ron practiced the killing curse. I can ask him about it." I really need to learn how to do it myself. If the legal system is ever completely corrupt, we'll have no choice but to start killing the people who attack us. She rolled her eyes internally. That's assuming we won't need it to survive anyway, like we would if we were attacked by people with advanced shields... or another werewolf.
Even as it approached a year after the event, she was unable to let go of her guilt.
"That might work. At the same time-"
"I'll see if he can teach it to us off the grounds. Hogsmeade would be best, since we'll still be in a wizarding area, and the wards for dark magic are only for the castle," she said as she rose, remembering she had assignments to complete, as well as regular studying. It seemed Terry would not be following her.
"Speaking of Ron, we had a recruit."
"Oh?"
"Mafalda wants to join us. I would guess she is not content to take up space in the room without being part of the group." She did tell me a few things I needed to know about the Slytherins for the trial...
"Well, when we were that age-"
"I turned her down," Terry explained. "Her heart is in the right place, but the reason is all wrong. I told her that since Ron and Hannah spend a lot of time in there, either one of them would be best for helping to get her up to speed."
"Did you tell them to scare her away from it?" Hermione asked suspiciously.
"I haven't spoken to either of them, but they probably will."
His words stayed with her as she walked off. In truth, she would have liked to have Mafalda in the group, but the safest thing for her would be to teach her and practice with her without handing her responsibility. It was easy to remember the time they were worried about her having been captured, especially because of her reaction. She must realize that we can't just rely on her. Right?
Remembering that it would be a bad idea to leave the library without Terry, either for her, him, or both, she decided to work on assignments. The group had almost entirely given up on the Triwizard Tournament, as any of the champions had a fair shot at winning, and there was little the students could do anyway. To keep things fair, the tasks after the first had probably been delegated to each of the other Headmasters, as she had some idea that Karkaroff was behind the dragon. It was nothing like what Snape would suggest, going off his potion riddle in the Underground Chambers, and the race was most likely Madame Maxine's doing, as she seemed to have a specific aversion to violence. -not that anyone would give her credit for it, as a half-giant.
She had some idea the assignments were meant to keep the students from fighting, but she doubted she could rely on the effectiveness of the plot. Malfoy and his vassals, as she had learned, had been expelled to Durmstrang, where the coursework was rigorous enough, but unlikely to take up all of their time, since dueling at the Institute was less 'tacitly allowed' and more 'a central component of education'. Killing or seriously injuring another student was more than enough to get them expelled, and the penalty was probably even more certain with foreign students, since that made it legally confusing, as demonstrated, but similar penalties had not stopped them in the past. If Draco gets expelled from Durmstrang, he needs only brush up on his French and try again, though some of his 'associates' will not be so fortunate. Many of them likely do not even have French relatives, much less family members in high places.
Thinking on the system that seemed to be employed in the wizarding world as she worked through a Transfiguration assignment, and of course it seemed unfair, but it served to explain quite a bit. There was some quote she barely remembered about the dress of the eighteenth century European upper class being the same across countries, because they were aware of each other and emulated each other, but the common folk wore different raiment even in the same countries. She had previously made the connection that the Latin-based incantations were simply the language of western academia, standardizing the incantations as immutable descriptors of the effects. Magic seems to work the same way. What people learn in Hogwarts and Beauxbatons and likely the North American school is mostly the spells created based on the theory going around in academic circles for hundreds of years, with some amount of national distinction. Folk magic would vary exponentially more, and in countries that were never part of the western academic world, folk magic would have become national magic, and would be taught in homes and smaller schools.
Opening one of her own books to a blank page, Hermione drew six overlapping circles. Folk magic, national magic, international magic- no, this doesn't work. She turned to another page and drew a large circle with 'International Magic' in its center. I'm not used to visual representations. I have to start with what I know. She drew a second, smaller circle that was almost entirely consumed by the larger one, but did not make up its majority and labeled it as national magic. We can assume that each involved nation contributes to international magic, but not all of it is accepted by academia, and the majority of spells cannot be localized to any specific country. A smaller circle overlapped with national magic, labeled as folk magic. Britain's folk magic is less studied and less developed than that of other countries. Her national magic not only unified the folk magic, but created new spells and theories. Pre-Statute wars drove innovation into effective combat magic, as well as Divination, though advancements that tried to force it to be clearer and more reliable ultimately failed and were forgotten.
Around what she had so far, she drew a circle labeled 'Understood Magic'. Folk magic might have been dark or accidental originally, but with repeated practice and teaching it to younger generations, the theory would have been hammered out over time in folk wisdom. In any case, it can now be studied by those sufficiently interested. Overlapping the largest circle, she drew a smaller one about half consumed, labeled 'Ancient Magic'. Much is known, much is forgotten, but how much is uncertain. She was aware that some books referred to the different practices across cultures and times as 'the ancient magicks', but it broke the format. No reason to do that, now is there?
Created spells belonged in the large circle, though within that it was somewhat harder to say. Of course, the individual created spells most of the time, but there were also spells created as a group effort, and the magical theory involved could come from any level. Dark magic and accidental magic belonged outside the large circle, though the prior was at least consistent and contained incantations some of the time, so she put it in a circle around the known magic, and accidental magic outside.
Where does the Patronus Charm go? She thought about it for a minute before deciding one of them would simply have to learn it. Terry seemed to have implied that one of them or the other would learn dark magic or the Patronus Charm, and it would be her choice as to which. If I decided to learn the killing curse from Ron, then he would be asking after one of the teachers to see if he could have a private lesson. It seemed most of the teachers were capable of the charm from the trip to Azkaban, though she was unsure of how much of the adult population could produce a patronus.
Had the prison with the dementors not been destroyed, it might have become a controlled spell, to be caught by the wards on the wands. Hermione could think of no better way to raid the prison and not have to worry about the guards than casting the charm, so preventing people from practicing it would theoretically prevent them from practicing breaking in. It would also keep them from being able to defend themselves against wraiths, but I doubt their deaths are relevant in the long run. A full dementor is a cooperative dementor. She had a passing notion that surely the Ministry would have managed to work something out with the nonbeings, since they were ultimately rational entities, but she doubted they would willingly go down to the Department of Mysteries, even if they knew prisoners were being kept there, since the risk of some unknown entrapment was too great.
All of a sudden the processing taking place in her mind came to a halt.
There was another purpose to the Triwizard Tournament.
