Hogwarts leads the group around the castle for a whirlwind tour of the major landmarks, pointing out the three major libraries. Each dedicated to a different subject. The first, advanced and slightly restricted focus based magic. The second free-form magic, they were told that this was mostly discussions on what people had used it for and how they visualised it, as freeform magic was highly personal and couldn't be pigeon-holed the way that focus based magic could. The final one was for non-magical subjects, such as history, flora and fauna of the three worlds that students could freely access. They were then led to the Dormitories where their things had been placed into individual rooms.
"Hogwarts?" Hermione asked.
"Yes?"
"Where are the door handles?"
"You are the door handles."
"Huh?"
"You are here because you have been learning how to control your magic. Now you are here you need to learn how to use it. So like the armoury, apart from the places that people like Tracey here can visit, everywhere else requires you to consciously use your magic to access, even the main doors and the dining area that we'll be using. It is to teach you to consciously use your magic and get used to doing so. By learning to do that it also helps to cut down on your unconscious uses of magic. For all of you, your imagination and knowledge will be far more important than any lists of spells that you could memorise. So, go ahead and open your door."
Hermione immediately pulled out her wand and flicked an Alohomora at the door, and absolutely nothing happened.
"Oh, my dear child. You need to open the door, not use a tool to do it for you. But maybe we should leave this till after we've eaten and spoken, then you can explore and play while I have a much needed talk with the Deputy Headmistress."
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They all found them seated in plush chairs around the fire in the great hall.
"You have now eaten and drank to your hearts content, so now we should really get into what you'll be doing in addition to your normal lessons, as well as a few warnings. First, I need to explain a bit about the nature of the realms and the names that those that live near the balance point call things. This is important because you will see these terms pop up in the literature here pretty much interchangeably.
"The balance point and associated realms reach from the shore of the sea of magic to the edge of the desert. We called this these the middle realms. Magic makes up a more or less equal part of everything. A consequence of this is that it is the only part of the realms that we can travel to where creatures of pure magic like your familiar can develop naturally. This consists of 7 realms, 3 on either side of the balance point. It is also home to the Sidhe and other fae, as a mortal race they are far more likely to raid the earth now that people have started traveling out of the desert again than the other threats.
"Between there and here is the lesser desert, or the outer realms as we called them. Magic permeates everything and there is no person or creature there that you would not consider to be at least a squib. The threats of these realms are all local, rather than something we would need to worry about, however that doesn't mean that they're not dangerous. But, their highly valuable for that, the creature that one of your students fondly calls a crumple-horned Snorkack. Though how anyone can think of a bear the size of a polar bear with a magical horn that causes complete and total paralysis in it's prey when it strike with it, fondly I don't know. However, most of their carcass used to be used in many potions when the school was built. There are also the stones and ores that the goblins favour, drenched in magic, and changed because of it.
"Harry, Hermione, do either of you have the control needed to release your magic and control how much you release without doing anything with it?"
Both of them shake their heads, a slightly confused expression on their faces.
"No, never mind then. One other thing that all of the realms that we've just spoken about have in common is that time there doesn't run at the same speed as it does on earth. In the sanctuary for example a day lasts for 48 hours, and half of that is spent open to the dream. None of you are ready for that sort of exposure yet, as you don't have enough sub-conscious control over your magic. Living in this level will make you learn that control though, as this world is open to the dream for 9 hours a day, so you'll need to get used to reigning in your magic while you're moving around. Don't worry about being caught out, the castle walls light up with blue fire for 30 minutes before it starts so that visitors have time to return to earth or find somewhere to sleep through it. This leads me to one rule that you need to know, you are not allowed to bring any magical to this level or the armoury. They can go their on their own, but it is a punishable offense to do it, and if they get lost in the dream you will be expelled. You can ask me for permission to bring someone over, and I will keep an eye on them and render them comatose if necessary. But bringing someone without permission is akin to attempted murder."
Lavender and Parvati look a little confused, but Parvati is the one who speaks up, "Why is it attempted murder to bring someone here?"
Daphne answers before Hogwarts or McGonagall can, "It's because they can't leave here without assistance, and most people only sleep for 8 hours or less. Which combined with the fact that the dream either starts at 8pm, or finishes at 9am."
Hogwarts clarifies helpfully, "The first one I think, though I never had the opportunity to learn about the time you use on clocks as they were invented after people stopped visiting."
"Thank you, that makes it even worse. If you remember the school wide curfew for 1st and 2nd years is 8 for the dorms, and 9 for bed. After 3rd year that gets moved by an hour. So say I brought Draco here to do some homework with me. If we managed to 'lose track of time' and I 'didn't notice' the blue flames on the walls, by the time he realises that it's curfew and if I dallied just a little to long, he be pulled into the dream completely unprepared. I would then be able to claim that I didn't realise the time, oops. Which brings up a question, did we actually need Filch to watch over us while we were learning to get through the evening?"
"Well done young warlock. Yes, that is exactly the sort of twisted reasoning that people have tried to use in the past, and is why I insisted on having that rule written into the charter. It's precisely because anyone that needs to be brought here cannot return under their own power that it is attempted murder. It also applies to the Armoury even though the dream there is only 3 hours as it has so little traffic, and has very few amenities beyond classroom and practice."
Minerva speaks up her accent more apparent than normal, "Why have you moved these students dorms to here if it's so dangerous?"
"There's a few reasons, and I suppose the least important would be that if a student can reach here on their own, they have enough control over their own magic to resist the pull for long enough that I can knock them out, if it's even needed. So they no longer need to stay in The Nest. The second is that as the most experienced I was given the responsibility of teaching warlocks and mages. While Godric would teach in the Armoury, they were lessons that could be done in The Nest if it came to it, so he would take classes there to avoid damaging anything important. I suppose it would be as if your Defence against the Dark Arts class had a strong practical component, rather than just identifying and learning the counters to certain spells that you classify as dark for some reason, while I remember you need to have a new head of department emblem commissioned for the combat magic department, as the one that's currently in use has a minor poor judgement charm engraved on it, it's not that bad, but it mounts up and over a year or so can cause serious problems."
Minerva's mouth gapes for a moment before she asks for clarification, "What do you mean emblem for combat?"
"You have an emblem do you not?"
"Aye." She pulls out her emblem.
"Ah, you have the emblem for unstructured magic, I do love your lessons as you've been one of the better instructors over the last several centuries. But you would have been head over the illusion and healing teachers as well if you still taught those classes, as both disciplines rely far more on what you know, and what you can visualise than they do specific spells. Even the simplest healing spells can heal grievous wounds if the healer has enough knowledge about what they're healing and can visualise the process. There was also the Head of structured magic, which I believe your charms instructor currently holds the emblem. This was charms, runes, and rituals, as it didn't matter what you knew, the spells only do what they say they do. You can't make a lumos show a horse or a house, you can't make the levitation spell work like a catapult. Oh, you can get creative uses out of them, such as casting a detached lumos in front of your opponents eyes, or levitating a club over a trolls head and dropping it. Indeed that's what the Combat department was supposed to teach in addition to threat identification and neutralisation. How to take what you'd learnt in the other two magic areas and apply them creatively on the battlefield and in life. The last area of study that was the domain of The Nest was Academics, which was supposed to teach the ability to think, analyse, put those thoughts to paper, and research. Instead it only teaches History now, I suppose you could include Arithmancy in that. Sorry I'm ranting."
"No, don't worry, if all of your rants are this informative you never need to worry about ranting around me. Where would Astronomy, Divination, and Care of magical creatures fit?"
"Divination is easy, that came under your department, though it was never a full class before, though a diviner was kept on staff because they could warn of attacks. Why you have a prophet teaching divination I don't understand, as the future was always a very small and niche part of Divination and the various Oracles around the world would usually snap up prophets as they were aware of the best way to pull out their talent. Oh and do go easy on her drinking habit, she really does have the sight, and it's the only way for her to stay in the present, though I would suggest she uses hallucinogenic herbs rather than incense if she's trying to induce visions of the future in her students. Astronomy was part of ritual magic. Finally, I can't believe I forgot the Natural world, I think your Herbology professor has that particular emblem, and potions and care come under that. I'm sure that Helga had all of this written down somewhere in one of her journals, they're in the headmasters office in the sanctuary. Sorry about forgetting that one, the natural world was always the domain of alchemists when I was younger, and so held no interest to me."
"So what department were you in charge of?"
"Freeform magic and exploration. I taught students how to rely on their own magic and how to use focuses as a tool rather than a support. I could also teach them how to walk from here to Greece in seconds, or turn a door into a portal, or even just to vanish from one place and appear in another. I also showed them how those abilities could be disrupted and the most common counters or work arounds for it. Though latter is reserved for mages, as only a slight variation on it would render your wand worse than useless, as it would give you a false sense of ability. In fact… Yes, we can demonstrate that. Hermione, would you be able to just let go of your magic and concentrate on just letting it spread out across the room?"
Hermione does as asked with a few directions from Hogwarts, though she's surprised at just how hard it is to let it be there and not do anything with it.
"Well done, I can see how easy this was which means that both you and Harry are going to find it harder to learn the finesse you need later, as it will be like learning how to crack a walnut with a Maul, while your companions will struggle with exercises like this that require power more than finesse. Minerva, would you please try to turn your teacup into a bunny? Hermione all you need to do is keep your magic like this."
Minerva pulls her wand and does the third year transfiguration with a contemptuous flick of her wand, and nothing happened. Frowning she tried again, then again with the verbalisation and wand motion, and finally she did it with her full concentration and it slowly turned into a bunny with ceramic teeth and a handle instead of a tail.
"What? What happened, I've not had that much trouble with transfiguration since I was a wee lass."
"Well done Hermione, you can draw your magic back in now. What happened is that I had Hermione blanket the area with her own magic. This then imbued everything in the area with that magic, so when you were trying to transfigure the teacup you needed to first push her magic out of the teacup, and then while keeping it out perform the transfiguration. Because of the difference in power you needed to rely on all of your experience with transfiguration to make your spell focused enough to push through her magic and use your spell. If Lavender, Parvati, or Daphne had done the same I doubt you'd have even noticed. Though their peers would. Equally, apart from the headmaster I doubt there is anyone else in the school who could have succeeded at the spell. This is something that the Sidhe do naturally on top of their skill with magic and sword. That Harry here doesn't suggests that they are of mixed heritage. I warn you both now, do not practice this without me, as you are powerful enough that you may kill yourselves if you try to do it for too long in realms with as little magic as this one. It's like using magic to fill a bladder with air. If you do it at the surface you can only fill it so fast while the air is allowed to escape before it bursts. But if you do it deep underwater, you can fill it faster because the weight of the water resists the expansion of the air. But equally the larger amount of air doesn't go as far."
"Oh, you're talking about pressure, and how it always wants to equalise. Muggles have equations that describe that process precisely."
"I'm sure they do child, but you have to remember that I'm over 2000 years old, so their recent inventions don't really interest me, especially as magic makes all of those predictions more or less useless."
Harry touches her arm, "I'd like it if you could explain it to me simply later, as it seems like knowing it will be important."
"Before I send the children off to play and explore, I need to impart one warning. The Crawling Chaos is abroad once more, if you see a man that looks like he comes from the deepest parts of Africa, but with more middle eastern features, run. Do not stop to talk, just run and call my name. I will try to buy you enough time to escape as he does not have enough power to make me submit here on these worlds. He has already marked two on your world that I know of, a young man in the 1940's who subsequently tried to perform the Egyptian ritual of anchoring to prevent his soul from being taken. However the version he used seems to have been sabotaged, as he instead split his soul, he left a piece in my audience hall in The Nest, which given recent circumstances I'd like it if you could transport it out of Hogwarts soon. It appears that he tried to do the ritual again, as the Headmaster has a piece, and it was by investigating that he came in contact with The Crawling Chaos, and has been marked. If you do come into contact with it, remember that they can only mark you if you give some sign of acceptance. It is true for all magic of the soul, it can only ever work with the agreement of both parties, the greater the disparity of power the less agreement is needed. With the disparity in power or experience that you all have, simply acknowledging that he has you in his power and there's nothing you can do is enough, with more experience Harry and Hemione he would need some sort of verbal acknowledgment. With more power the same would be true for you Minerva. Just remember that while you're in my walls I can and will come to your aid and give you time to escape to The Nest were he can't go unless summoned. Be warned, if you ever learn it's name, to speak it's name is to summon it. Now off with you, I need to have a chat with Minerva. Oh, and Tracey, I think you should be getting back to The Nest if you want to attend the feast, the rest of you, if you want to get into your bedrooms I suggest you start working now, otherwise you'll be trying to do it and deal with the dream at the same time."