Heart of the Eclipse, Book one: Ascent
Chapter 9
Terra Arcana, Hogwarts Realm of Magical Education
The initial herbology course turned out to be mostly about general safety and procedures when dealing with plants in general, as well as safety precautions when dealing with unknown plants. They didn't learn any magic in that introductory course, and wouldn't until they entered the fourth herbology course. Since their world was effectively infinite, you had to assume that the varieties of plants and animals out there were infinite, too; Herbology and zoology (or "Care, Evasion and Fighting of Magical Creatures") were the two longest series of courses offered at Hogwarts.
Essay Writing was an easy course most students took to earn some easy points. There were more writing courses one could take afterwards, but those were mostly for children who wanted to become scribes – a general class of magic users who channelled magic into their writing to achieve a variety of long losting, but rarely powerful, effects. Most of the magical parts of these courses were also covered in the rune courses, though. Few scribes used runes, because most runes were very ambiguous and hard to use for extended texts with a specific meaning.
The rune course – the first in a series of only seven courses – was quite a bit more difficult. Those courses covered only one runic alphabet, the basic dwarven alphabet, as it was the easiest and safest to learn and the one blacksmiths and carvers often used.
They could learn another two runic alphabets in self study and take an exam on those, but offering those as a separate course would take too much time. Elven runes, for example, often changed their meaning due to sentence structure, rhyme schemes and similar influences. Their power could ebb and flow with the moonlight, in a few cases a word could even have opposite meanings on full and new moons. Then, there were the fey runes – those were likely to do anything at all, and controlling their effect was more of an instinct than a teachable discipline.
Dwarven runes, though, mostly depended on the material they were carved into. There were subtle differences between their effects on wood, metal and stone, and the quality of the material could further strengthen or weaken the effects. That alphabet was neither the most elegant nor the most efficient, but it wasn't very likely to cause explosions by accident, either.
Meditation was another easy course for the triplets… or so they thought. The course included preparatory lessons on mind magic, though, which was a very delicate art and strictly regulated. Reading another person's mind without their agreement was the only reason their teacher could remember that had caused a student to be arrested in all the time he had taught at Hogwarts.
The primary reason wasn't that you would invade somebody's privacy, though. Even the most passive mind magic had the potential to cause serious mental damage if the mind mage lost control of their magic, and mental damage was very difficult to cure. In most cases, it couldn't be cured.
Any further courses in mind magic were only taught to those who scored perfectly on a special test on mental and magical control.
Then, there was focus training.
"A hammer – one of the most common foci in your family, if I recall correctly?"
It was the first lesson on focus training, and the teacher went around and looked at every student's focus so he could plan the best way to teach everybody. The old man, who was called Professor Ollivander, also handed out wands to every student, although only the few who hadn't managed to call forth their own focus would use it in these lessons.
"Yes, sir. Hammers, axes and a few swords are the most common Weasley foci."
"Indeed. Did your family give you any instructions on how to use it?"
Ronald Weasley, the last student before the triplets, nodded.
"They gave me a book, but told me I should start on it only during this course."
"Yes, a wise decision. While some aspects of an established focus type can be generalized, every focus has specialties that separate it from all others. No two souls are the same, and neither are their reflections into this reality – the focus – nor the effects they cause."
The old teacher went on, arriving at Flora's desk.
"Armour – another common focus type, though it has never been inherited throughout any specific line. I have never seen, nor heard of, wooden armour, though, and that will probably mean that there are significant differences between yours and other such foci. Looks like living wood, too, so there might be some regenerative properties to it. Did you receive any instructions on how to use it?"
Flora shook her head.
"I didn't think so. As common as armour types may be, they are hard to master. Since their main use is shielding, you will have some trouble projecting your magic outwards from your focus. You might want to focus on unfocused magic for any spells that are cast onto something – or someone – else."
Harry was next.
"A… cape? No sleeves, goes over the shoulders, no way to close it in front – though it covers your arms and sides… Yes, the closest I can describe it is a cape. I have never seen one as a focus before. Any experience using it?"
"No, sir. The best I can describe it is my magic feels slightly more steady, but somehow suppressed, but I didn't actually try to cast anything with it yet."
"Suppressed, you say? I never heard of such an effect before. This will be difficult. Honestly, it might be best to carefully experiment on your own and use a wand in the meantime; Being hasty with an unknown focus type can be dangerous. It's better to let it grow on you and tell you its secrets on its own time."
"Tell me its secrets, sir?"
The professor looked uncomfortable.
"Technically, this is not something for beginners to try, so please take this slowly. Using deep meditation, it is possible to get your inner soul – your actual soul – and your outer soul – the echo that manifests itself as your focus – to resonate. You will know when this is the case – it is impossible to describe the feeling beyond the fact that you will recognize it. If you practice enough, that resonance will stay even outside the meditation. Once you reach that point, there will be times when you will simply know something about your focus, something you didn't know before and cannot really explain."
"If you don't mind the question, sir, you look uncomfortable discussing this. May we know the reason?"
At this question, which Susan Bones – the only girl in their class who had not yet found her own focus although she was born on Terra Arcana – had asked, the professor seemed to shrink into himself a bit, before sighing.
"Miss Bones, this technique goes beyond mind magic – it's passive soul magic. The only reason it isn't illegal to teach is that it isn't an active form. Still, this is not something to be done lightly, and definitely not something to be rushed. Soul magic is first tier magic. Using even this much, which means barely coming into contact with it at all, will have lasting consequences, though they will most likely be benign."
They didn't ask anything else. Everybody knew about first tier magics – most famous among them the elements. Beyond that tier lay the impossible: Alchemy, life magic… chaos magic. The first and last such magic witnessed by humans had been the Great Convocation.
"And our last student. This looks like a body focus – you change your hands into animal paws and similar things?"
Hermione nodded.
"Not unique by far, but unusual. The last one in my course was several cycles ago, a metamorph – great for self enhancement, but in her case nearly useless for projected magic, since she could only change herself into other humanoid forms. Your claws, and whatever else you might be able to transform part of your body into, should be more helpful for those kinds of magic. Just be careful, a few animal morphers in the past were known to temporarily lose their human minds when they transformed completely."
He went back to the front of the classroom.
"Now, let us begin by showing you why you need focus training. I assume everybody here has levitated something before?"
Everybody nodded. The few latecomers in their year were not in this course, they had to take some remedial lessons first to catch them up to the kids who had gone through a full godparenting.
"Very well. Shape the magic as you would normally do, but this time, push it through your focus. This is not the correct way to do this in almost all cases, and you will see why in the next few minutes. Try to levitate the feathers in front of you, please."
What followed next was hilarious. Well, it would have been to an outsider – to the children, it was, at best, frustrating. Instead of levitating the feathers, some simply didn't do anything – like the blonde boy named Draco Malfoy, whose focus resembled simple playing cards, and everybody who used a wand. Others were less lucky.
The Weasley boy's hammer levitated up to the ceiling, then fell down, nearly hitting his fingers. The smallest girl in the class, whose focus was a fan, at least moved her feather, but instead of levitating, it shot straight forward and was stuck in the wall. Neville Longbottom's sickle focus actually managed to make the feather do the opposite of what it should. The feather dug into the ground so deeply, it would probably never be found. Harry was less than amused when her cape floated so it looked as if she was hanging upside down.
"You see, children, a focus has certain associations. It is a tool, and the shape dictates what magic it is best at – and how it affects other magics. You will need to learn to use these tools as they intend to be used – and that starts with learning to use that which it resembles. Mr Weasley, what would you normally do with a hammer?"
"Hit things?"
"Overly simplified, but yes. You hit things. Depending on what you hit, how you hit it and how strongly you hit, you can break things or, by driving a nail into something, construct it, or even change the shape of metal. And while this is the simplest example in your class, the same principle applies for each of you: Think about how you would achieve your task using the single tool you have – your focus – and shape your magic accordingly. There are countless ways to make a feather float using pure magic, but there might only be one that uses your focus. Find it! Imagine it! Do it!"
The rest of that class was less exciting, but still quite chaotic as everybody tried to learn how to use their focus – or a wand – for various tasks.
There was one more class during their first moon which everybody had to take: Flying lessons.
There were several ways to fly using magic. There were brooms, carpets, flying boats… basically, if it could hold your weight, somebody had tried at least once to make it fly. Most of those drained magic continuously, though, which why there was a safety precaution.
Before a Hogwarts student was allowed to use any item to fly, they had to be able to float for an hour without any help. This drained at least ten times the magic the item would, regardless of height, so if you could float a few inches above the ground for one hour, you had no problem flying a broom a few hundred feet in the air for ten hours.
Also, Quidditch, the main sport played at Hogwarts, was played without brooms or any such items. It also wasn't played while flying, exactly.
"For those who want to, there is a bit of a trick we encourage people to learn, and which is used in Quidditch: Jumping. Basically, you use magic to run and jump in the air, not to carry you in a controlled way. This requires physical fitness, good reflexes and much practice to time your magic correctly, but it takes less magic than having some spell simply carry you. Just imagine your feet hitting a solid disk of magic, anchored in the air at exactly the angle you need."
All three girls mastered the technique well enough to pass the course with full points, but only Harry really enjoyed it. Hermione muttered something about trying to grow wings, and Flora simply preferred a comfortable, lazy ride on the magic carpets.