Spell crafting, to Hermione's frustration, was somehow simultaneously vague and esoteric while also being extremely precise and technical. The book she'd purchased went on and on about how spell creation required an understanding not just of the desired final result, but of the path magic might take to get there. The sorcerer needed to be in the correct mental headspace in order to properly meditate on the core nature of the spell they wanted to make, before beginning to dissect the wordless 'essence of spell' into parts.
There were three parts to developing a spell:
1. The intent
2. The incantation
3. The wand movement
The intent seemed easy at first glance – what did you want the spell to do? – but it required the sorcerer to actively consider what magic would be doing should such a spell be cast. Would a mechanism be physically moving, such as with the Locking Spell? Would a person's body be affected, as with Densaugeo? It was the spell creator's responsibility to determine not just what the magic would do, but how the magic would work once cast.
The incantation was where things got technical. The incantation required a root from a dead language to channel the sorcerer's intent, similar to how Arithmancy required symbols that had been used long enough to imbue them with meaning. The difficulty was figuring out an incantation that helped the flow of magic rather than impede it, and that was where advanced Arithmancy and Runes came in.
By translating the intent of the sorcerer into runes and suggesting different possibilities, Arithmancy could help predict the most successful outcome based on the flow of magic. But it was next to impossible to perfectly translate intent into runes, and sometimes the answers that came back were difficult or impossible to understand. The flow of magic wasn't just from the words, but also from the caster's body movements, which often needed to be determined via trial and error. That didn't take into account the nature of dead languages, either, where many of the words had once held secondary meanings and connotations that had been lost to time, in addition to their denotations, and this tangled meaning could mess up the intent embedded in the incantation, and disrupt the flow of the magic as well…
It was at this point that Hermione stopped reading and got annoyed instead.
"It's so needlessly complicated!" she complained to her coven a few days later, while they set up for the Water Ritual. Susan had said Cedric was still recovering from his incident with Dark magic, deeming him too weak to attempt the Occlumency ritual at the moment, so the coven was making the most of the full moon, which was happily glowing above them, illuminating the field they'd chosen. "All this complicated stuff about 'determining the flow of magic' like it's a river of water or something, like it's not sentient—"
Hermione caught Luna and Susan exchanging a glance and stifling their giggles, but she ignored them, already on a roll with her rant instead.
"What child hasn't had accidental magic happen?" Hermione went on. "Magic isn't just nothing – it reacts to our intent. Magic is alive. The Blackwell kids have the right idea of it – just state their intent, channel right up from the ley line, and hope for the best—"
"Do you think God was a wizard?" Blaise asked mildly, etching the ritual circle into the ground.
Hermione was caught entirely off-guard. "—wait, what?"
"How's it go again? 'And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light'." Blaise looked up at Hermione. "That's imparting intent with magic, yeah?"
Hermione was speechless.
"There would've been no meaning to the word 'light' yet, though, right?" Harry said, joining the conversation. "How can you convey meaning with a word if the word never existed before?"
"Maybe the act of speaking the word for the first time gave it meaning," Blaise suggested.
Now Luna joined in. "That would imply that there is one true language that God spoke, and that all other languages are descended from it."
"I thought that was a thing," Harry said, frowning. "Wasn't there a tower of babbling or something?"
"The Tower of Babel," Hermione said automatically. She paused, blinking in astonishment, before she gave Blaise a dirty look. "And no, I don't think God was – or is – a wizard."
"Then what is he?" Blaise asked, smiling innocently and batting his eyelashes.
"Something I'm not going to delve into anytime soon," Hermione said curtly. "I have too many projects based in material reality on my plate as it is. Now: who's going first?"
Harry stepped up, always the brave one. He stood at the opposite side of the ritual circle, the pile of glittering sapphires in between them, and Hermione gave him a serious look.
"This was the worst of the bunch for me," she warned him. "For me, my lungs were flooded with water, and then my bloodstream. You need to be determined and prepared."
Harry took a deep breath, settling himself and closing his eyes. "I'm ready."
Hermione had pushed her magic into the moonstones enough times that it came easily, the little rocks beginning to glow, and Hermione was abruptly annoyed to realize there was a flow to her magic lighting them up – it was like water pouring from one glass into another, and she could feel the flow of it within her and the circle.
Sharply yanking her mind back to the task at hand, Hermione refocused.
"We summon and call upon the element of water," she intoned. "There is a body to battle for, for you to be squatter."
The pile of sapphires began to radiate a soft blue light, and Hermione could feel the magic building in the circle, in the stones.
"We challenge your waves, your ice, your tide," she chanted, making the sigil for undine in the air. "Come fight for Harry's body as yours to reside!"
As she chanted, Hermione let herself feel the magic – really feel it, in a way she hadn't quite realized before. She'd been able to feel magic for ages now, and she supposed a lot of the time, it did feel like water, flowing from one thing to another and filling it up or pouring out. But there was more to magic than the flow of it – even now as she chanted, the air in the circle grew tense with an invisible energy, a vibrating potential waiting for a cue, and an amorphous, blobby thing began to collect over the glowing sapphires.
During the third recitation as the undine solidified more, Hermione watched Harry while still feeling the magic, the chant coming naturally now. The vibrating energy in the air didn't feel like water anymore to her – it felt like a tangible curtain of light particles, invisible but somehow still sparkling, holding form above the bright moonstones of the circle they'd laid.
As Hermione finished the third recitation, the undine vanished, and Hermione noted the sudden release of the magic in the air, the potential spent, even as Harry abruptly gurgled, choked, and fell to the ground.
There were small screams as they all leapt back from his thrashing body, no one wanting to interfere.
"This is almost worse than the screaming," Luna said, watching, her blue eyes bright. "The drowning."
"Drowning is supposed to be one of the worst ways to die," Blaise said.
Harry took a sudden gasp, coughing out water from his airways, only to gasp in pain, his face wrenching up into agony. Hermione bit her lip, remembering the awful feeling of the water distending her organs and giving her hypoxia.
"What do we do if he can't win?" Susan asked quietly. "With this one, would we even survive a failure?"
Hermione was silent. She didn't know.
When Harry stopped gasping thirty seconds later, rolling over and coughing hard, there was a collective sigh of relief, and Hermione was at his side in a moment, helping him to his feet.
"Merlin," Harry said weakly. "You weren't kidding – that's awful."
"Yeah," Hermione said, watching as Harry staggered away from the circle to collapse against one of the growing trees. "It is."
Susan was willing to go next, and she survived, though she seemed incredibly shaken by the experience.
"I mean, I beat it, but how?" she asked, staring blankly at the grass. "I was so dizzy…"
"It's okay," Hermione soothed. "It's yours now. You're okay. You're alive."
Susan crawled over to collapse next to Harry, not even bothering to stand. Luna stepped forward, ready to go next.
The magic felt slightly different with Luna, but not by much, Hermione observed. She wondered if that was because of Luna's part-Fae ancestry. If the Fae were somehow truly beings made of pure magic, it would stand to reason that their descendants would interact with magic slightly differently too.
Luna managed to defeat hers rather quickly, surprising everyone, and Luna smiled, a sharp glint in her eyes.
"I went on the offensive," she said. "I used my air magic to whirl the water into a hurricane of magic, so fierce it couldn't rain down."
The others looked impressed, and Hermione was rather impressed herself, though she wasn't totally sure how that was even possible.
Now, however, the other three done, Blaise stepped forward, and Hermione bit her lip hard.
"If you fail," she said, "Blaise, if you fail—"
"I won't fail, Hermione," Blaise said gently, his eyes soft on hers. "Have a little faith in me, yeah?"
Hermione took a deep breath.
"Yours will be the most powerful," she said, striving to keep her voice from shaking. "The others say you have to bargain with the elemental, because they have wills of their own. You need to be ready for that and make a deal as quick as you can before you drown."
"Duly noted," Blaise said, his lips quirking. "I'm ready."
Hermione took another deep breath, steadied her magic, and began.
"We summon and call upon the element of water—"
This time, with no sigil made over top of the glowing gemstones, a different shape began to form in the center of the circle. It was almost like a ghost, barely there and practically transparent save for the light of the circle reflecting off tiny drops of water hovering in the air, and Hermione watched as a humanoid body began to coalesce with her chanting.
At first, she thought it was a mermaid, but no, it had legs. It was only during the third recitation that the figure abruptly shimmered and became clearly visible; a being made of water with what looked like the ocean wrapped around its body like a dress. As she came to the end of the third go-around, Hermione watched the figure turn its eyeless face towards Blaise, who swallowed hard.
"We challenge your waves, your ice, your tide," Hermione said, determined to finish despite her fear. "Come fight for Blaise's body as yours to reside!"
The being of water vanished, and Blaise shook suddenly and violently as if he was having a seizure, before crumpling to the ground, water burbling from his mouth. There was a tense quiet as they all watched on grimly.
"What is it?" Harry asked, breaking the silence. "I've got no idea…"
"I think it was a nymph," Luna said.
Susan glanced at Hermione, who was biting her nails and determinedly staying silent.
"He'll be okay," Susan reassured her. "Really – he'll be okay."
"I know that," Hermione said. Her voice was strained. "I do – I really do – but that doesn't make the anxiety go away."
There was a sudden burst of light, blinding them, and the next moment Blaise was suddenly naked on the ground, his robes gone. Instead, he was clothed in sheets of water, all with different textures – there was a sheet of ice across his chest, and the waves of the ocean draped over his hips and thighs. Ripples of a country brook clothed his legs, and the calm stillness of a pond coated his arms. Hermione tried to respect his privacy as best she could, but she was fascinated by the different textures and colors of water that were being used like cloth. She wondered what had caused this - it was a significant deviation from the expected path that had developed with these rituals, even from the ones with the larger elementals.
Suddenly, Blaise gave a great gasp and began coughing, his body bending with the force of it, and everyone collectively relaxed as all the water on him immediately melted and sloughed off of him.
"That was—" Blaise broke off, coughing again. "That was—wow. Wow. I mean. Okay." He gave the others in the coven a sharp look, glaring up from the ground. "You could have warned me."
"We did," Harry said, injured, but Luna stepped forwards.
"Did yours want something you weren't prepare to give?" Luna asked, her blue eyes bright in the moonlight, and slowly, as Blaise stood, he nodded.
"We—we managed to make a compromise," Blaise said finally, coughing again. "Morgana, it better be worth it. I feel like I've been buried alive in a pond."
"Don't you just mean 'drowned'?" Harry asked, and Blaise shot him a look, his eyes bloodshot.
Hermione watched as Blaise stood up shakily, shivering in the cold. His hands were covering his privates, cupping them close to his body to shield them from view, but the rest of him was bare now, the water melted and gone. His body shook in the cold winter air as Susan rapidly dug in her pack for his ritual robes.
"Grower, not a shower?" Harry quipped, and Blaise was startled into laughing.
"Why? Want to see?" Blaise offered, batting his eyelashes at Harry. He smirked, suggestive. "We could take them out and compare."
"Maybe somewhere where you won't freeze to death," Susan said firmly, stepping forward and giving Blaise his ritual robes. The coven hadn't worn them for the ritual – they'd figured out after the fire one that it was probably a bad idea – and Blaise took his gratefully, covering himself.
"Can you all condense water now?" Hermione asked them. "Or – it might be easier if we practice at the Black Lake. Affecting water that's already there will probably be much simpler."
"Do we want to do that where other people might see?" Blaise pointed out, and Hermione frowned.
"We could go to Blackwell to practice, during the day," Luna suggested. She smiled. "We need to find wood for staves anyway, and they're on an island. It'd be ideal."
Hermione considered, before nodding, starting to grin.
"That's perfect," she said with satisfaction. "And Blackwell is Harry's school, right? If they help him come up with ideas for the Second Task or see anything, they won't tell anyone."