( Chapter Three)
Standing rigidly in a central room that was opened to the sky, Harry Potter had his eyes glued to the ground.
No word escaped his lips and there was no gesture from him, but yet as his eyes focused on the granite floor, emotions would flood him with intent and will and the some inches of the granite would disappear from different spots on the floor, leaving patterns that composed of the runic alphabets for the Enslavement Ritual.
Nonverbal, gesticulation omitted, wandless magic.
Impressive, especially considering his age, yet Harry was not satisfied. The process from him channeling his magic to the runes fully appearing on the granite flooring took five minutes. His objective was a one second mark so he kept doing it again and again; pushing his transfiguration skill to the zenith. He cancelled it, restored the floor to its previous wholeness, then kept doing it all over again.
On and on, he continued until a knock on the door distracted him from the purposeful monotony. A wave of his hand unsealed the door and pushed it open.
Sheda came strolling in, holding a wooden box that was no larger than a shoe box. Her other hand carried a trunk which had been charmed to be featherlight. She looked from his still, stoic figure to the granite floor which he was glaring at. As she watched centimeters deep, patterned gouges appeared on the floor. moon beams from the opened roof fell upon the runes as a cloud in the sky drifted off. It took her less than a second to recognize the impressions as runes. She'd barely finished identifying each rune when they vanished only to reappear a few minutes later.
This continued twice before she finally addressed Harry who still had his eyes fixed to the ground. "Are you casting magic with your eyes?" She asked sounding doubtful of her own question yet her tone carried a hint of consideration.
Harry didn't need to dissect her words and tone to understand her feeling. She doubted that he was casting magic with his eyes but would not doubt that he is telling the truth should he claim that he was indeed doing so. He could understand why she'd believe it, he'd done a lot of things that bothered on impossible. Optical casting was pretty mild compared to being capable of mage level wandless magic at the age of eleven.
Understanding her didn't stop him from snorting at her questions nonetheless. "No, that's just myth. People said Merlin could do it but what he could do is what I'm doing. It's wandless magic without the wand gestures. It does not need immense magical power as most think, only fierce determination," he told her, making her stare more fixedly at the granite which he kept transfiguration. Her's was the look of a scholar who had just discovered something new and exciting to explore.
"What exactly are these arrays?" Sheda asked, looking at them with intense curiosity. "I can't recognize any of them. Some of the runes look familiar but most are alien."
Harry chuckled. "Sheda, you might be one of the leading experts in the field of runes, but do you think know all the runic arrays and languages that exists. Even the goblins can't claim such and they have been at their grave robbing business for over a thousand years and over the centuries they have encountered millions of arrays for different functions and several runic languages."
At first Sheda blushed at his mild admonishment then she directed her curious look, which had previously been directed at he runes on the floor, at him. "How do you know this? The information regarding the goblins?"
Harry shrugged. "Voldemort had spies among the goblins." Seeing her wide-eyed look he decided to explain further and give her a clearer picture of the relationship between the dark lord and the rogue goblins.
"Goblins like gold," he told her. "In peacetimes such as this when they are not fighting one of their infamous rebellions, their society change, out of necessity, from bellicism to meritocracy centralized on wealth. The more riches you acquire the higher you are on the food chain. Voldemort would rob muggle gold and diamond mines and give half of the wealth to a few nonconformist goblins and then they will hand over to him prized and coveted goblin knowledge and secrets."
"Wow," she said, sounding awed by the underhandedness of the relationship. "And now you have all those knowledge and secrets."
"Indeed I do," he said then pointed at the runes that he made appear on the ground. "This, though, is something even goblins know little about. These are eleven runes. A few characters slipped into the Norse runic alphabets in the past. These arrays are what facilitated the Enslavement Ritual wizard of olds used to conquer the elves. Ironic, isn't it? They used their own magic to enslave them."
Sheda's eyes almost popped out of their sockets at this revelation. Harry could have sworn he saw her bounce on her feet once. He decided to stop her before she could assault him with a salvo of a thousand questions. He knew she had a passion for runes but that was not what they were here for.
"Did you bring them?"
She nodded and reluctantly looked away from the where the arrays kept appearing and disappearing. She opened the box she was holding. Within it were seven fist sized diamonds. Harry stopped what he was doing, holding back from vanishing the runes he just made appear on the granite floor.
He walked over to her and picked up one of the diamonds. These were ancient foci, or at least as best as goblins could make them nowadays. Goblins use them add more power to their rituals and the ancient wizards used them to tie the enslavement rituals to leylines, making the magic globally prevalent, binding all elves to all wizards' magic.
Harry will be doing the same tonight, but with all boggarts and it will be only his magic he will be binding them to. He'd already altered the 'all wizards' part of that ritual. Fortunately for him, unlike elves, boggarts are sentient energy beings so do not need to feed off his magic. It would have been suicide to have all the magical pest, probably millions of them, drawing from his magic. He wouldn't last a second. Even Merlin wouldn't last a second.
"Let's do this," he told her and she nodded.
He directed her where to place the trunk. It contained a Boggart. The runes were drawn, or rather tranfigured, in a pattern of a star with one hundred and twenty eight points. These points were compass points and were not four of eight because of the importance of accuracy for this particular ritual. These points were representations of all the cardinal, sub-cardinal, and micro cardinal directions of the planet. They will facilitate the infusion of the ritual's effect into the the leylines reaching all corners of the world. The points will act as pointers for the leyline, which was currently under the building Harry was within, to spread the ritual globally.
After Sheda had placed the trunk in the middle of the ritual arrays, Harry took the box from her. The seven diamonds within, he arranged them in a circle around the trunk.
When that was done, he sat down opposite the trunk, within the circle of diamond foci, which was within the one-twenty-eight (calligraphic) rune star.
"How long?" He asked his mentor.
"Ten more minutes," she said after glancing down at her watch. "You are cutting it a bit close."
Instead of replying, Harry looked up to the sky, waiting impatiently for the Blood Moon. The Earth was soon going to cast a shadow over its sole satellite and then block off all foreign magics like the lunar magical energy that empowered werewolves and many plants, magical and muggle.
Earth's magic will be most pure once the blood moon starts and Harry was going to tap into that purity and cast his own shadow over the concept of reality.
It was a bit anticlimactic when it happened. Harry saw the moon become red, and then he spoke the eleven words to begin the ritual. The runes lit up and the diamonds began to glow. A pressure of magic doubled the gravity in the room. He waved his hand to open the trunk.
The Boggart jumped out but before it could show Harry a depiction of his fear, the ritual magic took hold of it. With another wave of his hand, Harry sent the empty trunk flying out of the ritual site.
Fortunately he was not using a spell. Spells are formulated from bandwidths of frequencies from magical wavelengths. Frequencies are pure magic and that was what he used. He was not certain how a structured spell will affect a delicate ritual like this and he was not willing to find out.
Perhaps for the first time in history, a Boggart's true firm was seen. Harry heard Sheda gasp but ignored her. He studied the thing before him. It was nothing but a bluish white ball of energy that was floating in the air. It was beautiful and showed signs of nuclear activity.
"I believe I may have just discovered a magical power source," Harry said.
Sheda moved closer to the ritual site, staring at the Boggart in amazement. "Like a battery?" She asked, absent-mindedly, in response to his comment.
"More than just a common battery, more like a magical equivalent of a super nuclear reactor," he said.
"Divine energy power," Sheda said in glee, then she frowned. "Won't that be immoral as this is a sentient energy?"
"Well I might have been too hasty in classifying divine energy as sentient. They are not sentient and nowhere near sapient. Think of them like bacterias. As bacterias are aerobic organisms so are divine energies magical organisms. You might wonder about the sentient thing because of Thunderbirds, dementors, and phoenixes. Microorganisms like bacterias and archaea have seemingly sentient traits, the former reproduce through binary fission and the latter obtain energy from sunlight, yet neither are sentient, they don't have brains. A Boggart is not sentient, nor is a dementor. They may evolve to be so like phoenixes and Thunderbirds but they are not there yet. As bacterias can be used for several scientific purposes beneficial to mankind, so also will we be able to use boggart's divine energy as clean energy."
Sheda nodded, accepting his explanation. She gave him a concerned look though as the ritual dragged on. "I didn't expect it to be this uneventful. I have never heard of a ritual where the one performing it can converse frivolously."
Harry chuckled and rested his hands on his knees, continuing to watch the bright ball of psionic magic. "You call being probably the first to see a boggart's true form uneventful?"
Before she could reply he felt something tighten around his soul, making him flinch and gasp. It was like the feeling of an unbreakable vow which he knew much about having made a few with some of his inner circle.
He felt something new within him, however, that was different from the aftereffect of an unbreakable vow. It felt like his bond with his house elves yet it was a bit different. The bond was singular yet had a branch, a fork like a river. The main body connected Harry's soul to the divine energy. As for the fork, one branch led to the energy and the other to Harry's mind. This gave him a huge clue on how to control his non-sentient friend.
At his gasp Sheda rushed over to him but she did not cross the runes. "Are you alright?" She asked, tone tensed with worry.
Harry nodded slowly, and blinked in surprise as the runes luminescence dissipated and the diamonds lost their glow.
That was quick, he thought.
He got to his feet and smiled as the ball of energy rose with him. He looked at Sheda whom's eyes were darting from him to the boggart. "You were right, it was uneventful. It felt like an unbreakable vow. But it clearly worked," he said, pointing at the boggart that followed him as he stepped out of the used ritual site.
"Now let's see how this works," he said, not taking his eyes off the boggart. He grasped the forked bond and through it directed a bit of his consciousness into the boggart. It was a mental link and he used it like a Legilimency projection.
Immediately the connection was made Harry involuntarily staggered back. Psionic energy flooded him in a feedback. He instantly gained awareness of everything he could use this energy to do.
He saw this boggart using its psionic energy to cause nightmares for people, create illusions. Once these memories, if they could be called that as the creature was not sentient, ended, Harry noticed a new feeling. It was collosal and it was powerful. He could feel minds, the minds of everyone in the vicinity of Slytherin Castle; everyone in the nearby Gaelic villages.
He heard their every thought, saw their dreams, wishes, and nightmares. Their memories were available to him, their entire minds had been made bare like an opened book.
As he stretched his awareness, his consciousness caught another boggart and another link was formed. Harry's telepathic range increased to encompass all of Irish sea coastlands within time. And as his range expanded he linked up with more boggarts. In less than four minutes he had access to the mind of everyone in Ireland.
But it was too much for him. He'd have to train, gain experience and get used to it. Slowly he retreated until the Boggart in the room was the only one he was linked to.
With a loud sigh he opened his eyes which he hadn't known he'd closed in the first place. His skin was clammy with sweat and he was on the floor.
He was wondering how he'd gotten there when images flashed through his mind of him putting his hand to his head, groaning and then collapsing on the floor. The images were from Sheda's mind, she was currently kneeling on the floor and cradling his head gently.
Harry gasped. Psionic divine energy could bypass Occlumency barriers without alerting their owners. And without the need of direct eyesight in contrast to Legilimency attacks.
This was awesome. He wanted to do some more tests to see what else this energy was capable of. But he'd expended a lot of energy and he needed rest. Rest meant home.
Groaning he removed his head from Sheda's gentle hold and rose up to his feet. The boggart was hovering over his head like a Halo and Harry stretched out his hand for it to land on his palm. It did exactly so, making Harry grin.
"...Harry!!"
He almost jumped out of his skin. He looked and saw an irate Sheda on her feet, glaring at him.
"Eh... what?" He asked, confused about why she'd had to call out his name so loudly when he was standing right next to her.
"I have been trying to gain your attention since you woke up, but you just had this blissful smile on your face and were ignoring me," she said, giving him a disapproving look. "Now, tell me nothing went wrong. Why did you faint?"
Harry frowned. "I did not faint, I fell," he denied, making his magical guardian scoff. "Anyway, I pushed my mind too much. I tried using the psionic energy to view all of Ireland."
It was Sheda's turn to gasp. "Wait, you can use its abilities directly?" She asked surprised. "I thought the bonds would be like that of house elves. You will ask it to do the psionic tasks for you and then it will report to you via the bond?"
Harry shrugged helplessly. "I thought so too. Maybe this development is because of the tweaking I gave the ritual. But it's better this way. It would have been beyond difficult to communicate, via soul bond, with a creature that is not sentient."
Sheda was nodding and looking at the boggart thoughtfully. "Promise me you will be careful and also you will go over the arrays to see what caused this development," she said, placing a hand on his shoulder and giving him a serious look.
He nodded. "I promise. But we should get going. Voldemort have corrupted this place and the dark magic here is oppressing."
It was unfortunate that the Slytherin Castle was the only place he knew that had a private ritual chamber he could use. Well, at least until Voldemort's return. Hopefully by then he'd have a castle of his, sitting atop a leyline, with its own ritual chamber.
A single wave of his hand returned the granite floor to its immaculate state, vanishing all signs of the ritual. Be summoned all the diamonds and the trunk the boggart came in. Sheda returned the diamonds to the box and took the trunk from him.
The boggart moved up from Harry's palm, across his arm, to sit on his shoulder. Harry gave it one amused glance then followed Sheda out of the chamber. He was now a step closer to his goal.