Noswyl absentmindedly crushes a rock with his magical telekinesis and then uses transfiguration to put it back together.

I have been doing exercises like this for years as I remember Quinn West doing this to increase his magic reserves, by depleting his magic throughout the day. And it's also working for me, though it doesn't seem to scale with my already increased magic reserves. But it's still good for me because I need practice with my transfiguration and it does still increase my reserves even if only minimally.

He stops the exercise at about three quarters capacity in case of emergency, normally he would stop at one third but he's planning on experimenting today. Unbeknownst to him this small decision to save more magic than usual will be extremely beneficial to him in a couple hours.

So the next spell to try is Diffindo, so far in my experimentation the magic in this universe is like "HP: A magical journey". Which was tied for first place with "This Bites" in terms of my favorite fanfics. So based on that there are two ways to cast magic: the indirect way aka make things do something using magic and the direct way aka make magic do things.

He tosses the rock that he was using for his magic exercise up and down absentmindedly.

So the indirect ways of the severing charm would be to use something physical most commonly air to form a blade to cut something. Then the direct way would be shaping the magic into a blade instead. Now the question becomes what is the easier method for this spell, as it's really useful and I would like to be able to use it sooner rather than later.

Noswyl stops and then tries to cut the ground with both methods, the direct method leaves a dent in the floor because it wasn't sharp enough. While the indirect method just blows some wind.

Well that answers my question, but why didn't the air work? If I remember correctly nothing is actually cut it's just spilt so air no matter how fast it's moving won't push through something very easily, so it's highly inefficient but possible. If you used air as a core and then constructed a film of magic around the air then it would work, and I suppose that would be easier for most people as they don't really think of the spell they just use it.

This time he tries again with the direct method, but tries to make the magic thinner and sharper. This results in a much smaller dent that follows where the magic hit though it's still clearly very dull.

Is there somethi- wait I'm such a fucking moron! I've been using my magic without visualizing the results. I've just been manipulating my magic on its own. The only thing I was visualizing was the magic itself, I didn't visualize the outcome simply the process. I was trying to force magic to do what I wanted by manipulating it directly. And I'm willing to bet that magic has a pseudo consciousness and that's why incantations and wand movements work. And I was essentially replacing the pseudo conscious with my own which is so inefficient I don't have the time to describe it.

Immediately challenging his magic and imagining the ground being cut a clean cut appears and he feels a small portion of his magic drain.

Oh it's even more inefficient than I thought, I used so much less magic with that than my version of lumos.

Noswyl starts laughing at his own stupidity, in pity.

At least it wasn't a total waste as you still need intricate magic control to do magic, wand less magic even more so. Because you still need to guide the magic, and without incantations or wand moments I have to direct it even more. I suppose inadvertently I was doing an incredibly effective training exercise.

my definition of indirect magic and direct magic was spot on too but I was to stupid to realize the implications of that fundamental concept.

(An analogy for what Noswyl is talking about here is casting magic is like conducting an orchestra and what noswyl was attempting was the equivalent of playing at the instruments himself simultaneously. This was only possible because the orchestra aka the spells were simple and didn't have many instruments aka components of the spell. That's why a spell like Diffindo is a first year level spell despite its dangers as it's rather simple.)

Though I certainly shouldn't expect all magic to be this easy, as I said I was doing an extremely effective training method. So all magic until probably fifth year level should be relatively easy with the first three years being almost trivial. Though of course I still don't know like 90% of those spells so I'm probably a bit off.

Noswyl doesn't know this but the reason why his magic is so easy with visualization is because of his time in the void, his imagination has grown extremely powerful.

Gregory and Bartholomew have been walking for an hour when they come across the bridge that Noswyl took as his trail Leeds to it, but in the opposite direction there are a lot of trails of magical residue showing magicals walk here regularly.

Bartholomew looks to Gregory "So which path did they take?"

Gregory hasn't stopped looking at the ground to not lose the trail "They went left towards the path less traveled by wizard kind."

Bartholomew nods and thinks for a moment "well the criminal is on foot, should we get a broom to close the distance?"

Gregory nods while keeping one of his eyes on the trail before both of them lock onto something slightly behind them on a branch. "Well that makes this significantly easier, they were cut by a branch and left some blood. I'm sure it's theirs because it has the same magical resonance."

Bartholomew snorts "yeah it makes it way easier, you set up the vestigium ostende while I try and get us a broom."

Gregory nods and transfigures a crude bottle and carefully collects the blood without magic or touching it himself, this takes a while as he tries to get as much as possible. After gathering as much of the dried blood as possible he drops some water onto it carefully and the closes the bottle. Sighing wishing he could use more complex magic that didn't require so many steps, or to use a better transfiguration technique to make a better bottle. But this is his punishment.

A little bit later Bartholomew returns with a single broom and approaches Gregory with a sheepish smile "they only had one broom they could spare."

Gregory sighs again "of course they did…"

They quickly hop on the broom which is uncomfortable and slows the broom down a lot but it still beats walking by a lot, Gregory then casts vestigium ostende a spell that can track someone as long as you have a body part like a piece of hair or blood. It is considered the most inefficient way of tracking someone because the body part has to be completely untouched by anything that can think, from rats to humans.

The spell does work though and the bottle starts moving in the direction of the target and Gregory directs Bartholomew on where to go…

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next chapter will be the confrontation!

you might think I'm over exaggerating how important visualization is for magic but not really. I based this characters thought process off my own and I would have instinctively visualized the magic and not the result, but after some research it doesn't seem to work that way in Harry Potter.

hope you had fun reading so far, I appreciate it even if you don't interact with the story beyond that:)