Harry Potter and the Physical Adept
Chapter 18: Fresh Ink
"Merry Christmas!"
The chorus of well-wishing reminded Harry once again of why he treasured his Irregulars, the regulars at Bourne's Comic and Games who knew his secrets; with Liv's help, he had prepared a large, buffet-style meal and served it on Christmas Eve, a small thank you to his friends for all they had done for him over the years during the traditional annual Christmas movie marathon that ran the entire day in the back room of the hobby shop, and now the cold leftovers was breakfast on Christmas proper.
With their own families to attend to, Ethan, Martin and Sarah only dropped by the shop long enough on the day before Christmas to wish the others well, but that was all the time Harry needed to give them their gifts. To the economics professor who enjoyed board games, he gave a copy of Snitch Snatcher! he bought from Quality Quidditch Supplies the day after returning to London, figuring he would enjoy the novelty of a magical board game, while he gave research librarian a sizeable collection of reference books he had purchased from Flourish and Blotts, and the sociology professor received a collection of texts written by magical individuals who styled themselves anthropologists about the behavior of beings, including volumes about giants, goblins, vampires, hags, house elves, veela and werewolves, though he expected she would have the same objections to what the magicals wrote about them in the same way she had rejected what they had written about normal humans.
"You sound different," Harry observed as he handed Jack the package that was his present to her.
"Karen's been helping with me accent," the Scottish programmer explained, the Ayrshire lilt much softer in her speech. "I realized it was making it difficult to be hired for freelance work if employers couldn't understand me, so I've been working with Karen on making me speech easier to understand."
"Well, it's working," Harry said. "I'll miss your lilt, though; I always found it very soothing."
"Thank you," Jack said, before opening the box Harry had given her, revealing a porcelain mug with a hinged lid. Opening it, she peered inside, then looked back at the Hermetic mage. "Coffee?"
"A mug of coffee that never runs out," Harry said. "Two creams and four sugars, just like you like it."
"What's this?" asked the actress, as she opened the box inside the wrapped box that was Harry's present to her, carefully lifting the AMT Hardballer out of the box, making sure to keep the muzzle pointed away from people as her training from the program kicked in.
"You did say you had been cast as the lead in a prestige mini-series for the BBC, so I thought you should have something to protect yourself with," the Hermetic mage responded. "You are about to become even more famous than you already are, and I wouldn't be surprised if people started stalking you."
"But a gun? That's a little too far," Karen protested.
"It's not," Jason interjected, carefully closing the box with the present Harry had given him. "You need to be able to protect yourself, and Ryan already taught you the proper way to handle one, so I know you'll be safe with it."
"Besides, it's enchanted to be quiet, no matter what you do with it,"said the Hermetic mage. "You could empty the entire mag into a bloke and then beat him to death with it, and it wouldn't make a sound."
Shaun was busy pouring himself two fingers from the bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhisky into the tumbler Harry had given him the previous year. Taking a sip, he exhaled sharply between gritted teeth. "Burns more than a good Scotch, but not nearly as strong."
"Sorry, if I had known, I'd have gotten you a bottle of a twenty-five-year-old Suntory Yamazaki," Harry said.
"Are you insane?" asked the construction foreman. "Why would you waste several thousand pounds on a bottle of whiskey I'm just going to drink?"
"Chef said it was really good whiskey, goes down smooth as silk and all," Harry said. "Also, why do you know the price of a sixty-seven Yamazaki?"
Shaun coughed, clearly trying to change the subject, and Harry decided to let the it go, turning towards Romy, who was still trying to figure out what to do with the crate of potions and potion ingredients and the book of potion recipes before her.
"I think I'm going to be very busy after graduation," she said finally.
"Congratulations on that, by the way," Harry said. "So, you have a master's now?"
"Thank you," said the chemist, nodding. "With this, I bet I could synthesize all kinds of pharmaceuticals magicals have been keeping secret for years."
"I hear the Pepperup Potion instantly cures the common cold," Harry said. "I wouldn't know for sure, though, since I don't really need potions when I get sick; I just cure myself."
"I'll have to look into it," Romy said, distracted, as she flipped through the book of recipes.
Suddenly, Patience hugged him from behind, folding him in her arms. "Thank you for the gift," she said as she let go of the boy, turning her head from side to side to model the ankh earrings she now wore. "You remembered what I said the first time we met."
"Of course," said the Hermetic mage. "Who could forget something as important as feeling like you don't belong?"
"Well, I'm glad I met you," said the daywalker. "I've got you guys now, it's amazing to have a family like this."
~ooOoo~
The crown jewel amongst Christmas presents Harry received was the freshly-minted core rulebook for the new, revised second edition of Shadowrun.
Harry had never experienced an edition change before, so for him, it was an exciting time to be alive, a chance to explore the possibilities of what an updated system could do when he next played the game with the regulars at Bourne's Comics and Games.
Though many of the concepts within the system remained the same, one thing that caught Harry's eye was the section within the Magic chapter regarding adepts, more specifically, physical adepts.
Being able to improve his body and its abilities might finally give him a chance to match up better with Liv on a physical level so that he could finally defeat her in a training match and force her to practice her combat skills more seriously.
While Shadowrun might only be a game, as Hermione was usually quick to remind him, Harry had drawn much of his understanding of the Hermetic Arts from what he had read from the core rulebook of the first edition of the game, so there was no reason why he could not find a way to adapt what was written about physical adepts to himself.
Unfortunately, for as much information as the book had on what physical adepts were capable of, there was next to nothing about how they achieved such superhuman feats, with only a vague line about "Powers attributed to legendary martial artists, warriors of shamanic peoples, berserkers, and the like" as a breadcrumb for where he could start his research.
It was not much to go on, but at least it was something.
~ooOoo~
Harry did not know much about traditional martial arts besides what he had seen in the gongfu movies Shaun loved; it was one of the few instances the construction foreman was willing to watch films in a foreign language, and the fighting had always gotten the boy's blood pumping. Though he was certain those movies had very little basis in fact, he also knew myth was often based on truth, so he spent two days watching gongfu movies with Liv and reading wuxia novels with little to show for it besides way too many pages of notes about qi.
By the time Monday morning came around, Harry was bored of watching movies and reading novels without getting any real answers, so he caught the tube into London with Liv, intent on visiting martial arts studios and experiencing martial arts first-hand. Unfortunately, what he had learned in the program proved detrimental to the experience, as everywhere he went, he saw unnecessary mysticism and wasted motion.
It was at the fourth studio they visited, a karate dojo, that the two Hufflepuffs saw a familiar face.
"Miles?" Harry asked.
Hearing her name, the girl with the slicked-back hair turned, taking a moment to recognize the speaker.
"Harry?" asked the Slytherin. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm doing some research on martial arts," said the Boy-Who-Lived. "What are you doing here?"
"I've been coming here after my first year at You-Know-Where," Myla answered. "Mother thought I should know how to defend myself, and father thought this would be the best place."
"Well, if you're here, then karate must not be very good, since I took you down and nearly broke your arm before you could even put up a defense," the Hermetic mage said.
"I wasn't ready then!" the Keeper argued. "You won't beat me again!"
"Sure, I'll be happy to kick your ass again," Harry said, shucking off his coat and tossing it aside. "You shouldn't need to have to be ready to defend yourself."
"What's going on here?" demanded an older man in a gi as he emerged from the back of the studio, tying on his belt.
"Smoke 'im."
In an instant, the Norwegian Ridgeback was across the room, rising off the floor as she flew knee-first into the gi-clad man's jaw, sending him to the floor in a limp heap.
"Anybody else?" asked the dragon to the stunned silence around the room.
"All right then, let's do this," Harry said, nodding to Myla, who nodded back and assumed a traditional karate fighting stance, while the Hermetic mage shifted his body into a position where he presented the right side of his body forward, left hand up and open in front of his chin while his right hand swung freely near his waist.
The two circled in silence, watching each other intensely as the karateka cautiously closed the distance. As soon as they were close enough, she threw a low roundhouse kick, aimed at the boy's left side, and the Harry immediately stepped away from the attack, catching the leg by the ankle as it impacted weakly against his body and immediately twisted inward, forcing the knee to bend and throwing Myla off balance, sending her face-first towards the floor. As she caught herself with her hands, Harry pounced on her exposed back, immediately hooking both of his heels into where her legs met her pelvis and flipping her onto her back as he quickly wrapped the crook of one elbow around her neck and grabbed his other bicep with the hand, while his other hand pressed against the back of her head.
In a matter of seconds, Myla Bletchley was unconscious, and Harry quickly released her, pushing her body away from him as he stood, shooting a dangerous look towards the other gathered students.
"Get out!" snarled the Boy-Who-Lived, and the remaining pupils quickly fled the dojo.
A few short moments later, the Slytherin girls's eyes opened and she sat up. "What happened?" she asked.
"You gave me your leg, so I took it and used it to get you on the ground, then I took your back and sank a rear naked choke, which put you out in seconds," the Hermetic mage said calmly.
"Just like that?" Myla asked.
"Just like that," Harry agreed.
"What have I even been doing here for the past three years?" Myla asked in despair.
"I don't know, Miles," Harry said, shrugging. "What have you been doing here for the past three years?"
"I thought I was learning self-defense, but apparently, it wasn't worth the money father paid," the girl said gloomily.
"We can try to fix that," Harry said, and Liv nodded, kicking the unconscious man repeatedly in the stomach until he groaned and sat up, clutching his face.
"Who are you?" asked the man, looking up at the dragon-in-girl's-form standing over him.
"Who cares who I am," Liv said, smiling viciously as she reached into the back of her pants and pulled out her handgun, pressing it hard against the man's forehead. "We're here about a refund for our friend; it seems you've been teaching her a bunch of bullshido like the con artist that you are, and now she'd like her father's money back."
The man reached for the gun, and the dragon immediately pulled it back toward her chest, striking him across the face with a vicious forearm that snapped his head sideways before thrusting the muzzle of the gun under his jaw.
"Try that again and I'll blow your brains out the back of your skull," threatened the Norwegian Ridgeback, grabbing the man by the collar of his gi. "Understood?"
The man swallowed and nodded fearfully.
"Where's the feckin' money?" the dragon asked.
"It's in the back, in a safe," sputtered the karate instructor.
"Show me," Liv growled, standing up with her gun still trained on the man, who slowly got up, his hands up.
The two disappeared into the back; not long after, there was the sound of a furniture breaking, before a wall was suddenly smashed apart by the man being sent through it.
An instant later, Liv emerged from the back of the dojo and tossed Myla a thick stack of banknotes held together by a rubber band.
"I hate scam artists," the dragon declared, shouldering her satchel. "We should go."
~ooOoo~
"You've changed your look," Harry remarked the next morning as Liv came out of her room as naked as the first time she took human form.
"After yesterday, I thought I'd alter my appearance, make it harder for the authorities to identify me as the girl who beat up that scammer," the Norwegian Ridgeback explained. "How is it?"
"Not like the previous you," said the Boy-Who-Lived.
It was true; the dragon's human form no longer looked the same as it did the previous day. Instead, her previously caramel-colored skin had become the tone of lightly toasted cashews, and she had grown a few inches taller, with small curves forming at her bust and hips. However, the changes to her face were the most noticeable: gone was the oval-shaped face, with its narrow amber eyes, flat nose and small mouth, replaced by a heart-shaped one, complete with eyes the color of hazel and shaped like almonds, a straight-edged Duchess nose, thin eyebrows and a shapely mouth with full, pink lips. Even her hair had lightened from its original mud color to a walnut tone. Gone too was the finger-wide black strip of skin that had run down the length of her spine that had previously identified her as a Norwegian Ridgeback.
Harry felt something stir in his loins.
"Well, I'm going to shower, and then we can go meet everybody for that thing you've planned," Liv announced.
Harry could only nod.
~ooOoo~
The reactions from those Harry had gathered for the trip was mixed.
"Who is that?" Hermione asked as soon as she saw the dragon-in-a-different-girl's-form, and it took Harry a few minutes to explain to her what had transpired, leaving out the more violent details of the previous day's events.
"Liv!" squealed Luna as soon as she saw her, rushing over to give her a great, big hug. "You look amazing!"
"You recognize me?" asked the dragon.
"I'd recognize you no matter how you look," answered the blonde brightly, kissing the dragon on the cheek.
"Aww, that's sweet," Liv said, leaning over and returning the kiss with one on Luna's forehead.
"Hey Liv," Fay said, completely ignoring Liv's change in appearance, as she had recognized the dragon by the closeness she shared with Luna. "I couldn't get Neville to come," she added. "He wanted to spend time with his grandmother."
"That's a shame," Harry remarked. "This was supposed to be a late Christmas gift."
Myla was the last of the invited to arrive and she went straight to the Boy-Who-Lived.
"How long have you been studying martial arts?" asked the Slytherin Keeper.
"I haven't," answered the Hufflepuff. "I started hand-to-hand combat training back in July."
"But that's less than six months!" Myla protested. "How did you get so good, so fast?"
"We practice everyday," Luna chimed in from next to Liv.
"We?" asked the Keeper.
"Bear, Dia and me," Liv said.
"Who are you?" asked the Slytherin finally. "And who's 'Dia'?
"I got you your money back, and you don't even recognize me?" asked the dragon in mock anguish, bringing a hand to her forehead dramatically and sinking to the floor in a feigned swoon. "Oh, the huge manatee."
"No, I believe that's Myla Bletchley," the blonde Hufflepuff said brightly, tugging on the dragon's arm and bringing her back to her feet. "And I'm 'Dia'."
"Is this everybody?" asked Patience, who had volunteered to chaperone the trip.
"It's close enough," Harry said, before turning to the woman accompanying the Slytherin. "I'm sorry, Miss Bletchley, but there's no parents allowed on this trip."
"How can I trust you to take care of Myla?" asked the only mother present. "She's only just met you this term, and I don't know you from Merlin."
"Mother, I trust Harry," the Keeper told her present parent. "He and Oliva took great pains to get our money back from the dojo after it was clear what they were teaching was useless."
The woman looked pained. "If you harm even one hair on my Myla's…"
"I'll return her to you no worse for wear than when we met today," Harry interrupted. "But we really need to go now, or we're going to miss the appointment."
It was a short walk from where the Hogwarts students and their daywalker chaperone had met to their destination, a familiar shop with a heavy wooden door Harry had visited just once before, but had once again made an appointment at.
Rapping on the door with his knuckles, the Hermetic mage smiled slightly as the lock clicked and it swung open, revealing the unchanged interior behind it with its sparse white walls and numerous framed designed hanging from them, now even more than he recalled there being before, a single leather salon chair in the back of the room next to a desk and several more file cabinets than he remembered.
"It's been more than a year, Harry," said the warm, silky voice of the beautifully pale noirette low and husky as she wrapped her tattooed arms around him in an embrace he received awkwardly. "I thought you might have forgotten about me."
"Never, Grace," said the boy, as she finally let go of him, looking her up and down as she did so. "You're my favorite tattoo artist."
Since their previous meeting, Grace had changed her hair, having shaved the side of her head, and the rest of her hair was swept the other way, hiding part of her face behind a curtain of cheek-length black locks. Gone too was the white tank top, replaced by a long, sleeveless black T-shirt with the AC/DC logo that went just past her derriere, secured in place by a wide leather belt with a large ring in the middle. The skintight jeans and ankle-length footwear also were absent, and in their place was a pair of strappy, knee-high black leather boots and nothing else, highlighting the sleek lines of the tattoo artist's lithe legs.
Harry felt his pants grow tight in the groin and shifted uncomfortably where he stood.
"I'm sorry, can you turn off the radio?" asked the Hermetic mage, as Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" began to play yet again. "I'm sick of hearing it already, and I've only been back less than a week."
"How has boarding school been?" Grace asked, as she did as the boy asked.
"Dangerous, as always," answered the Hermetic mage. "That's why I'm here."
"Another tattoo, huh?" said the pale noirette, and the boy nodded. "May I see the design?"
"This one is for me," Harry said, as he handed a sheaf of papers to the tattoo artist, before handing her an additional page. "And this one is for my friends. Including you, if you can tattoo yourself and you'd want it."
"For me? Really? What does it do?"
"It's a Ribbon," explained the Hermetic mage. "Once enchanted, it'll protect its bearer from any abnormal status ailments, like poison, curses, blindness, petrification and instant death."
"Wait, just how many normal people have you told about magic?" Myla interrupted.
"As many as I've had to," the Boy-Who-Lived said opaquely.
"What about the Statute of Secrecy?"
"You're not breaking the law if you don't get caught," Harry said with a shrug.
The Slytherin looked to those around her for help.
"Don't look at me, I sell drugs at Hogwarts," Fay said.
"I helped him steal the Philosopher's Stone," Hermione added.
"I'm a dragon, so it's not like I'm exactly legal either."
This left only Luna without an admission of guilt.
"What?" she asked brightly. "I haven't done anything."
"You're an accomplice after the fact," Harry said. "And you're harboring at least one fugitive."
"Cool," said the blonde lightly. "Now we're all co-conspirators."
"That's some heavy stuff," Grace said. "All right, which one of you is first?"
"Will it hurt? And how long will it take?" Hermione asked.
"It'll definitely hurt," Harry said, remembering having his brain rattled around his skull for his head tattoo.
"Depends on where I put the tattoo," Grace said. "Around the bicep or thigh, maybe two to four hours. Ankle, around one to three."
"There's seven of us; that could take more than a day," the Ravenclaw.
"I'll pass," Patience said. "Any change to my body just reverts back in the moonrise."
"And I don't need one," the dragon added. "I can just replicate the effect."
"Besides, I'm getting a full sleeve, so that'll take a lot longer," the Hermetic mage said.
"That's ten to fifteen hours," said the tattoo artist, and the boy nodded. "I'll do Harry's last."
"I've got the ink here," said the Boy-Who-Lived, taking out a fairly large bottle for shimmering pigment out of his haversack. "This drek is pretty bad to breathe in, but it's safe for injection, according to my research."
"I'll go first," Fay volunteered bravely.
"We can play games while we wait," Luna said cheerfully.
"I'll need to infuse Astral power to the tattoo as it's being inked, so I'll be busy," said the Hermetic mage.
"Astral power?" asked Fay and Myla at the same time.
"Harry can make magic items, but he can't cast spells," Hermione lied. "It's complicated."
Grace started to speak but stopped when Harry surreptitiously raised a finger to his lips, giving her a knowing look and a wink.
"Take a seat over here, and I'll get started," said the tattoo artist, and the Gryffindor took a seat, rolling up her left sleeve to her armpit.
~ooOoo~
It was late in the afternoon by the time Grace finished tattooing Fay, Luna, Myla and Hermione. The Ravenclaw had been the most apprehensive of the four, nearly backing out several times for fear of how her parents would react to her getting inked, but was ultimately convinced of the necessity of having the Ribbon permanently on her body by the Hermetic mage, though it was Myla who suggested she get the tattoo around her ankle where it'd be more difficult to see, which is where she had it inked as an anklet, the same as Miles and Luna had. Once each of them had gotten their tattoos, Liv had used heal wounds to accelerate the recovery process, reducing the recuperation process to just a few short seconds.
Harry was just settling into the salon seat, his shirt off, when he spotted the Gryffindor and Slytherin talking to the daywalker. "What's going on?" he asked.
"I'm going to take them across the street to get something," Patience answered.
"I'll be seeing you, then, chummers," said the boy, watching the trio depart before taking another bottle of pigments out of his haversack and handing it to Grace. "This is for the rest of the sleeve around the Ribbon band."
The tattoo artist looked from the ink to the design on the pages to the ink again. "This is really intricate, even more so than your scalp tattoo," she said. "I'm impressed with your work."
"Thank you," said the boy. "Dia helped with the final drawing; I'm actually not that good at it."
"Well, aren't you a little ladykiller," Grace said conversationally.
"Actually, I try not to kill women," Harry cracked wise. "But, on the real, I invited Pilgrim, a friend of mine, but he decided to spend time with his grandmother instead. Besides, legally speaking, Liv is my daughter, Dia is her best friend, and Wildfire and Pilgrim are pretty much inseparable."
"That still leaves three," said the pale noirette as she filled a small bottle with the shimmering ink and attached it to her tattoo gun.
"I only just met Miles a couple weeks ago, and Danger and I are just friends," said the Hermetic mage.
"What about Patience? She seems nice," Grace said, as she started to ink the boy's left shoulder.
"She legitimately scares me," the boy said. "I'm in pretty good shape, but she could snap me in half like a skinny twig if she wanted to."
"So, what's her story?"
"You really don't want to know."
"No, I'm curious."
"She's a friend of Vlad the Impaler."
"Come again?"
"She's related to Count Dracula."
"I don't get it."
"She's a fucking vampire."
"This is something else I'm going to have to take to my grave, isn't it?"
"You're the one who wanted to know; I tried to warn you off."
"You could have been more clear."
"I don't know how I could have been."
~ooOoo~
The Hermetic Mage flexed his left arm, looking over the full length tattoo that now went from his shoulder to his wrist with the exception of a small, stylized sæwelō, ᛋ, rune placed at the heel of his palm that he could easily conceal with long sleeves. It was well past midnight, and he had just finished infusing the Ribbon now inked around Grace's left thigh like a garter with Astral power, even going so far as to inject the ink into her skin in the very few places where the tattoo artist couldn't reach herself, though that had been a rather arousing experience. Now, she was asleep in the salon chair, exhausted from a hard day's work.
He could feel the Astral energy running through the design that went from his shoulder to elbow, a complicated and layered version of the original Ribbon design he had further reinforced with runes like ᚦ, thurisaz, the ancient Norse rune for the directed force of destruction and defense, and ᚢ, uruz, the rune of physical strength and speed, untamed potential, health and freedom.
The pièce de résistance, though, was the portion of the sleeve running from his elbow to wrist; passing Astral power through the trio of Celtic shield knots inked around his forearm and interspersed with algiz, ᛉ, the rune of protection, the Hermetic mage smiled as a trio transparent black discs large enough to cover his entire head and torso projected out of the back of his arm like a round shield, floating about an inch away from his skin in three separate layers.
Wordlessly, Liv pulled her pistol from her rucksack and pointed it at the boy, who nodded solemnly. Carefully, she aimed to not hit anything vital, then fired the weapon twice, and the handgun remained silent except for the sound of its action cycling.
The bullets struck the outermost disc, flattening on impact, and stopped short, clanging off and dropping straight to the floor; the impact did not even reach the boy, who watched in amazement as the dragon then emptied the entire magazine into the shield of pure magical force without so much as damaging it.
In the leather chair, Grace tossed fitfully but otherwise remained asleep.
Flushing the Astral power from the shield knots tattooed on the back of his arm, Harry nodded the ever-wakeful Patience, who had already taken his friends home to their families. Leaving a heap of gold coins, a thick stack of cash and a note, the dragon, the Hermetic mage and the vampire carefully collected the expelled shell casings and spent slugs, then departed the tattoo parlor, the door locking behind them.
Author's Notes: Jack's accent was always meant to lighten; regional accents were far less accepted during the 90s, and it was another small detail meant to show the Irregulars interact and help each other even when Harry's not around.
Edition changes are fun. Adepts were introduced in Shadowrun's second edition, so there was no way Harry could have been one before that, but now, he's got something to aspire to.
Gongfu literally translates to "skill", usually referring to one gained through long periods of diligent practice; you can have gongfu for cooking, folding clothes, mopping floors, etc. I've never been a fan of the Western spelling of "kung fu", and since Harry has access to every language through tongues, it would only make sense he'd use the Cantonese pronunciation, since most 80s and 90s gongfu movies originated from Hong Kong, and thus were originally filmed in Cantonese. Because Harry doesn't do dubs.
The karate section isn't me taking a shot at traditional martial arts; I don't actually know that much about it in its purest forms, since most school don't teach that, and I'm fairly certain that, in their purest forms, traditional martial arts are combat arts meant to hurt and kill. What I am doing, however, is taking a shot at the McDojos that sprang up in the 90s that focused more on belts, exams and grades than on actual technical skills and their practical applications. Contrast this with what Harry and Liv have learned in the program, which is pure technical skill and their applications without superfluous grading and examinations, and you get set up with situations like this, where somebody who was trained to kill, taking on somebody who is clearly outmatched because they were only taught what is essentially dance-fighting.
At twelve, Harry would be starting puberty, which is why he's having some bodily reactions to things he previously wouldn't react to at all. Not that his thoughts on it have changed, though; it's just purely biological.
Liv is slowly starting to develop her own sense of humor, based on Harry's sarcasm and Luna's whimsy, and it starts with bad puns.
Body modification—be it through tattoos, piercings, hardware or wetware—is a running theme in cyberpunk, and it fits the theme of the series for Harry to be continuously pushing forward in that regard; in accepting tattoos, his cohorts are dipping their toes into the punk motif with him, essentially committing to the journey ahead of them. And, as always, there will be blowback for having that kind of permanent magical defense inked onto them.
And yes, that is a multi-layered Captain America shield of pure magical force that he can't throw. Because that's what magical Harry Potter who reads comic books would do for protection once he figured out he could do it.
Once again, many, many thanks to my long-suffering editor, Romantically Distant, for all their efforts in reading and proofing my writing. And now you've read this chapter, feel free to leave a review or just PM me, and, with the WARS pandemic still on-going, stay safe.