November 1989
Scorpius Brandon Black had been, as Mum put it, a bit of an odd duck.
He was born ages ago, the son of a Lyra Black in the late 1790s — Lyra Black was Violet's five-times-great-grandmother, making Scorpius Brandon a great(-great-great-some-more-times)-uncle. He kind of made trouble right from the start, though that wasn't his fault: Lyra wasn't married to his father at the time. Unlike in the House of Potter, in the House of Black stuff used to be passed down in the female line, a long long long time ago, so in House law Scorpius was still a full Black and that was fine, but the normal people (Mum said kind of sarcastically) thought it was a big scandal. And then the marriage negotiations were another big scandal, because Lyra didn't want to leave her son behind with the Blacks, so the father had to marry into her family instead of the other way around, which he was actually fine with (the Blacks were stupid rich and all) but his family thought was kind of embarrassing, it was a whole thing.
Scorpius Brandon was a bit strange from the beginning, but mostly in ways Violet didn't think were bad? Mum said he was known for being super friendly and nice — weirdly so for the House of Black, who people usually thought of as a warrior family — but was also a little peculiar, having an interest in odd things, like tinkering with little enchanting projects, or playing around making glass art. At school he quickly made a lot of friends, but weird friends — Scorpius Brandon had a reputation for not really caring about all the silly social niceties and stuff, and not about class either, treating the nobles and commoners and muggleborns at Hogwarts just the same. He was really bad at the special fancy noble person rules in general, actually, he made such a nuisance of himself at formal parties and stuff that he was still a teenager when people just stopped inviting him.
He never married, but Mum was pretty sure he did have descendents out there — not them, though, Violet and Mum and Lord Arcturus were all from his younger brother Nigel. While still in school, he started having companions, which was the polite way to talk about it, but Mum said that when Lord Arcturus said that he meant lovers. Like, a boyfriend or girlfriend, but more than one, and they were kind of all each other's boyfriends and girlfriends? You know, like all the romance stuff normal people did, but instead of two people there were more than that, and they were all in a thing together.
Violet didn't get it at first, because, she didn't think you were allowed to do that? Was that a thing you could do in the magical world? Mum said not really, like, it wasn't a legal thing, like marrying just one person was. Sometimes things like that did happen, but it was pretty rare...or was just something people kept behind closed doors, in private. Scorpius Brandon didn't make it private, and didn't even seem to realise he was doing anything improper. Trying to bring more than one escort to nice fancy person parties was part of why he stopped being invited.
He and his companions built the garden house — Violet knew what that was, she saw that before! There was a nice big pretty garden outside the southern entrance of Ancient House, and there was a detached building a short walk away from the doors. That used to be where the groundskeeper's family lived, a long long long time ago, but there wasn't a groundskeeper at Ancient House for ages now (the elves did it instead), after finishing Hogwarts Scorpius Brandon and his companions fixed the old place up and added more rooms onto it, made all nice, and they lived there together. The number of people living there would change as people left his group or new people joined, but it was mostly around a dozen adults, Mum thought?
Adults, because there were kids there. Not really a surprise, since Violet was pretty sure Scorpius Brandon and his friends were all doing sex together, and babies was something that just happened when you did that and didn't make a point to stop them. None of his companions were officially Blacks, though, so the kids weren't either — a couple of them got adopted, but most of them ended up leaving, getting jobs and starting families and stuff somewhere else. Mum was pretty sure some of those kids, and their kids and their kids and blah blah, were probably Scorpius Brandon's, but she didn't know where any of them were, and it probably wasn't worth looking.
And Scorpius Brandon, just, lived his life in the garden house with his companions, tinkering with enchanted gadgets and making glass art, and just generally being weird and a little embarrassing. He mostly stayed out of things going on in the rest of the country, though he did make a little bit of political trouble, once — in the most recent goblin war, like a hundred years ago, he kind of sided with the goblins? Not openly, like he didn't go fight with them, but he refused to help the mages either, and when people asked he said the goblins were right about it. Which, Mum admitted, they were — the war only happened because the mages were breaking their side of a treaty, thinking the goblins wouldn't dare make them follow the rules, and were proven wrong — but that wasn't something you just said, especially while the war was going on. You know, bad politics.
Mum did remember him, he'd only died in the early 1960s. (Over one hundred sixty years old, because mages lived a long time.) She remembered him as being a bit peculiar, yes — she'd found his home with his companions a bit odd and confusing, especially since a lot of them were as peculiar as himself — but also generally nice, and not as stuffy and humourless as a lot of the other Blacks. He was super cool about Mum being bad at pretending to be a normal person sometimes, didn't even blink at accidental shifts. One time she showed up to visit as a boy, and he was so cool about it Cassie wasn't even sure he noticed. (He must have, he didn't use girly nicknames for her in that visit, but he didn't make a point about it.) They were hardly close, but Cassie's memories of him as an older man were mostly pleasant, if confusing at times.
Lord Arcturus made a very obvious frown when Scorpius Brandon's wand started hissing and letting out colourful steam the second Violet's fingers touched it. She didn't know what the deal with the steam was — Lord Arcturus said to expect sparks, the sound and the steam was odd — but it smelled nice! Like flowers and moonlight and, um, some kind of fruit, it wasn't coming to her. No, she wasn't sure what exactly moonlight was supposed to smell like, but it was nice! Even after it stopped steaming she could still smell it on the wand, subtler, just hanging around it...
The fruit was probably pears — the wand was made of pear wood. Violet thought it was super pretty! It was long — when other people used wands, she didn't normally notice how long they were, it was nearly a foot which was kind of awkward to hold properly (she was still little) — the wood sanded and varnished smooth, a nice rich orangish colour, with patches of a lighter yellowish and streaks of a darker almost red. Most of it was smooth, there were runes carved into it but you couldn't really see them, super tiny and filled with lacquer, except for along the top of the handle, were there was a ring of tiny little carvings of flowers! pear flowers! It was super pretty. Maybe kind of girly, she guessed, with the flowers and all, but she guessed Scorpius Brandon had been a little weird.
Also, mages had different ideas about what were girly things and what were manly things, she had trouble remembering that sometimes...
Violet liked it, and it even smelled nice! but Lord Arcturus didn't seem super happy when it picked her, on Samhain. Because there was the whole thing Mum explained before, about whose wand a Black child ended up using said something about who they'd grow up to be — and Scorpius Brandon had been, you know, a bit odd. But Violet was a bit odd anyway, and she was a metamorph, she was pretty sure it was okay for metamorphs to be a bit odd? So that was fine. She thought Lord Arcturus had the same thought, because after a few seconds he just sighed and nodded, congratulated her on finding a match.
(Mum would explain, later, that one of the wands picking her was another sign that she belonged with them. The wards recognised her as part of the family already, but the wands belonged to Blacks even before they were kept in a special Black place surrounded by powerful Black spells for decades and decades — they would only ever respond to a Black. Which made Violet feel a little better about lying to Lord Arcturus about who she was, she guessed.)
It was a couple days later now, and Mum was going to teach Violet her first spell. She was a lot nervous about that. She remembered, ages ago now, being told by...some doctor man (she forgot his name, only met him once) that the fairy stuff meant her magic might be odd. When she started learning magic, he said they should be careful, go slow and pay close attention to what her magic did — just in case she hurt herself, or other people. That sounded super scary, okay. It was just going to be her and Mum in the house, and Mum was awesome at magic, so Violet was sure she could fix anything if it went wrong, but...
Doing an accidental change was one thing, once it sank in that she wasn't going to get in trouble it wasn't really a big deal — embarrassing sometimes, a little. If her magic accidentally hurt people, Violet just knew she'd feel really badly about that.
She kind of didn't want to, but she knew she had to. Not only was she behind when special fancy people started learning basic spells, but also it was important to learn now if her magic was going to make problems for people. Better they figure that out here, with Mum alone in their house, than at Hogwarts surrounded by a bunch of other kids.
She was still rather nervous about it, though.
It was a weekend, one she didn't have a lesson with Master Walter — they tried to get at least two meetings a week, even when she was at school, but Master Walter had other students and his own work, and also junior painter people working under him doing all kinds of other projects he had to keep an eye on, so they couldn't always do that. Master Walter had her working on perspective at the moment, tricks to put depth into stuff even though it was flat, which, she knew not getting that right was a big part of why her drawings and stuff always looked so terribly fake, she just hadn't known how to do it right. She was supposed to do a bunch of sketches of stuff — in pencil, but she could colour it a bit with inks or pastels if she felt like it — and come back with them the next time they met, to see how she was doing. She thought the ones she did already looked better than her earlier tries, but still not perfect. She'd taken to sketching the angles and stuff first, which helped, but having to erase them after every time was kind of a pain...
Violet spent the whole morning working on her sketches, startled out of it when Mum called her down to breakfast, to find that hours had passed. She hadn't really noticed? That happened sometimes, when she was really concentrating on something — when she was just sitting around doing a puzzle or something, Mum had to remind her to eat, because if she didn't she would forget. Mum already made lunch for them herself, as she did a lot of the time when Violet was busy with something. Not that it was anything super complicated, just some cheesy potatoes and baked beans with bacon — Violet's kept separate on their own plates, so they didn't mix — and some of the last of their strawberries. Mum went on about the next trip they were going to take, for a duelling thing, but Violet didn't really talk much, focussed on eating in spite of her stomach feeling all squirmy. Too nervous.
Once Mum was done cleaning up, and Violet swung by the toilet quick, they went to the living room. They both sat on the floor, the coffee table between them — and Mum started her first magic lesson.
"So, there are three basic elements that go into any bit of magic," Mum started. "Power, focus, and intent. Power is the energy needed to do a thing. Focus is how that energy is directed in toward its goal, to help concentrate and shape it. Intent is the design of the spell, what you want to happen, or sometimes what you're feeling when you cast it. All three are necessary to do magic of any kind, though sometimes it can be kind of hard to tell where they're all coming from.
"All the little magics you've done at craft school are witchcraft. In all witchcraft, the power to fuel the magic comes from outside of you — from the ingredients you're using in a potion, or drawn in from the magic that just exists floating around all over the world. How the focus and intent work can be different in different kinds of witchcraft. In potions, for example, they're kind of the same thing; the focus and the intent are both provided by the ingredients you're putting in, and how you're mixing them together, the ritual of the timing and the stirring. In fact, the process does enough of the focus and the intent for you that you don't need to know how a potion works to brew one — as long as you have a general idea of what it's supposed to do, and as long as you're not too distracted making it, it should work. Enchanting is similar, the runes working as a nice little cheat to help you shape the magic correctly. That's why it's pretty common to have little kids do these first: the ingredients and the runes are doing half the magic for you already, so it's easier to learn the basics.
"Wizardry, though, is a little different. In wizardry, the power comes from you — you channel magic out of your soul, and through your body, and out into the world. The thing that makes mages different from muggles is that our souls are shaped slightly differently, so we can pull energy out of ours, and they can't."
That sounded weird, that their souls were shaped differently, but, Violet remembered that funny colourful ball of lightning thing they were showed at her first meeting with Chloé. She was pretty sure that thing was supposed to her soul, and everyones was shaped differently, like, that was what made them different people? So, like, some people had one of those lightning bits that bent one way, and in other people it bent the other way, and it just so happened that that was what made magic work. Kind of mad to think it was something so little, Violet probably wouldn't even notice the difference if you put a muggle's scan right next to hers, but.
"For focus, that's what a wand is for. A wand is a tool that automatically does a lot of the focussing for you, absorbing the energy you channel up and narrowing it to a very precise point — like a magnifying glass focussing light. There are other tools you can use to do the same thing, but mostly they've all gone out of fashion, almost everyone only uses wands these days. It doesn't do all the work for you, you still need to get the magic to the wand for it to work, and as you get more practice you'll be able to change the quality of the magic before it even gets to your wand, which can help you better cast different kinds of spells. But that's for more advanced wizardry, for now all you need to be concerned about is getting your magic into the wand, and it'll do the rest for you.
"And the intent, of course, is what you want the spell to do. Spells work best if you understand how they work, but that can be complicated for most people to do every time — it will also often require knowledge of magic theory and physics and the like that most people simply don't have. For most spells, it's enough to just imagine what you want to happen, a mental picture so clear you can almost see it. The incantation and the wand movement are sort of like a rune in enchanting: they help carry the meaning of the spell, and by concentrating on them they help you form the intent you need to do the spell correctly. They aren't necessary to do a spell, if your focus and intent are clear enough you don't need them, but they act as a nice little cheat, to make spells easier to do, especially for people who are still learning. You'll notice that most adults use incantations rarely, especially for spells they cast often — they know the spell well enough that they don't need the help anymore.
"So, power, focus, intent. Any questions so far?"
Violet shook her head — then hesitated, her head tilting. "Um. Which one is changing things? W-w-witchcraft or wizardry, I mean."
"The distinction between witchcraft and wizardry is actually a lot fuzzier than I made it sound, it's very complicated. You simply don't have the understanding of magic theory to explain properly. In short, metamorphs create witchcraft effects by doing wizardry."
...Um. What? Wasn't the difference just where the power came from? She didn't get it...
Smirking a little, Mum shrugged. "Don't worry about it, Violet darling, you're not going to start studying the magic needed to understand it for at least another five or six years. Now, wizardry itself is broken up into a lot of different kinds of magic. There are a lot, and how to split things up into different categories is a matter of debate, and there are many classes of spells that you won't be learning any of for years, so I'm not going to bother going over all of them. Simple version, there are charms, and there are transfigurations. A charm uses magic to change what something does, and a transfiguration uses magic to change what something is.
"An important thing to remember is that the effects of wizardry are temporary — when the energy fuelling the spell runs out, the spell ends. If you charm something light enough to carry, it will only work for a little while until the thing is suddenly its full weight again. If you transfigure a stick into a quill, you'll only be able to write with it for a little bit before it switches back. This is an important thing to keep in mind when you're doing magic, so you don't accidentally break something or hurt yourself when the spell wears off, but it's also a built-in safety feature: if you do a spell wrong, it'll only last for so long until it ends on its own.
"Since we still don't know how the alterations made to your soul are going to affect how magic works for you, we're going to try doing one of each today. We're going to try a levitation charm, and a simple transformation. That is, making something float, and changing an object's shape. If those go well, we'll try to do some practice before moving on to new kinds of spells, being careful with each new thing to make sure nothing unexpected happens. You already have practice channelling magic, whenever you change things, so I don't think you'll have any problems getting the spells to work, but I don't know what the fairy magic in your soul will do, or if it will even do anything at all. We just have to try, and see how it goes.
"So," Mum chirped, clapping her hands. "Any questions before we get started?"
Violet was nervous they were actually doing magic now, her stomach twisting and her chest feeling all tight and hot, she wasn't sure if her voice would work at the moment. So she just shook her head.
"All right." Her wand appeared in her hand with a flick of her wrist, a quick little jab and a round greyish rock, just a couple inches wide, appeared in the middle of the table. "There are all kinds of different spells to move things around, but we'll only be doing a simple one today. The charm simply causes the target to float about a foot above the nearest surface. Like so: yn dyner cyfodo." The little rock lifted gradually off the table, after a second or two came to a stop — Violet wasn't sure if that was a foot or not, but. "With practice, you can vary how high it will rise, and tweak the field to cause all kinds of additional effects, but this is all it will do if you cast it plainly." A swish of her wand and the rock vanished, Mum conjured another identical rock back on the table. "Let's give it a try, shall we?
"Go ahead and draw your wand." Trying not to look too nervous, Violet reached over to the soft black wand holster sitting on the table nearby, grabbed the handle and pulled it out. The wand was actually longer than the leather tube it was stuck inside, because magic can be neat like that. She was super nervous, worried something would go wrong and she was gonna set the table on fire or something, but she still couldn't help smiling a little — the wand felt all nice and warm and tingly in her hand.
(It liked her, happy to be out of the mausoleum to do things again. Violet didn't know that wands could be happy, but that's what it felt like.)
Shaking her head, Mum said, "No, not like that. If you hold the wand all tight and rigid, you won't be able to do the gestures properly. A looser, open grip, like this," holding her hand over the table, her fingers splayed loose and casual along the handle. It didn't look like she was holding it that hard at all, really, more like it was balanced between her fingers than gripped.
"Like a b-b-brush," Violet forced out, copying the non-grip. It wasn't exactly the same as she would hold a brush, her pinky was stretched out more, but closer.
"Close, yes. If you're all tight and clenched up, the magic won't flow through the joints of her wrist as smoothly as it should, and you want to have more freedom of movement." She slowly rolled her wrist, the tip of the wand making a smooth even circle through the air. "As you get more practice, you'll feel out a way to hold your wand that feels comfortable for you — it might not be exactly the same as I do it, but it should be more open like this, so you have better control." Violet copied the way Mum rolled her wrist earlier, the circle she made not quite as smooth and perfectly round as Mum's. It felt kind of awkward, the wand wasn't super heavy, but it was a whole foot long, she had to hold it at kind of an odd angle to make sure she didn't poke her own eye out, felt like the balance was off. "There you go, darling, that's good.
"The wand motion for this charm has two parts — perhaps three, if you want to be particular. You're going to start with your palm down and the tip to the side, and then you're going to drop your wrist like this, the tip coming around and making a nice wide swish across your target. Wider than that, you want to sort of draw a big open bowl you're going to scoop the target up with... Yes, that's good. Okay, and after the swish you're going to lift your hand away, the tip turned up at the ceiling, and then a swish down, aiming right at the target, and do a kind of bounce back up when you reach the bottom of your swing. Like this. For the bounce, let your wrist drop a little and pull up with your pointer finger, like— Yes, like that, that's good. And both of them together... Don't pause between them, go straight from the sideways swish to the downward swish, in one motion. Yes, that's good, all right.
"The incantation for this one is Cambrian. I don't actually know if it's the incantation they'll teach you at Hogwarts, or if they'll even teach this charm at all — this is the version of the spell I was taught as a child, different people use different versions. Yn dyner cyfodo. It's okay that you don't know much Cambrian, most people use incantations in languages they don't speak." Much, she didn't really speak any at all. Mum used it for things sometimes (it was her first language, supposedly), so Violet might know what a few words meant when she heard them, but she could hardly come up with anything on her own. "There are reasons for that, but it's a long story. If you're curious, it literally means gently, rise. Yn dyner cyfodo."
It took Violet a second to put together Mum meant for her to try saying it. "Um. Yn d– Yn d– Ynd—" She cut herself off, took a long breath. "Yn d-d-d— Ugh, stupid..."
"Hush darling, it's all right. I thought that might be a problem, but that just means we'll have to— You know a moment ago I said incantations help make it easier, but you don't really need them? that they're just a little cheat?" Violet nodded, trying not to look miserable (she really hated her stupid stammer sometimes). "So we're just going to have to do it without the cheat. It might be a little harder to get the spells right, but, you're not the only one who's going to show up at Hogwarts already able to do a bit of magic. Imagine how jealous the other kids are going to be when they find out you can already do charms silently," she drawled, her lips tilting in a toothy smirk.
Despite how annoyed she was (and still nervous), Violet felt herself smile, a little. Some of the noble kids at the stupid tea party things she had to go to were really annoying, she didn't really like them much. She was imagining the look on Pansy Parkinson's face, or ooh, Zach Smith, he was such a...
"So, let's try it the quiet way, okay, darling? When you're trying the spell, I want you to focus really really hard on the wand movement. When you're doing the sideways swish," Mum said, slowly doing the swish as she said it, "you're going to imagine you're drawing a big wide bowl. And then, when you do the downward swish—" She did it, sharp and quick, her wand freezing at the bottom. "—you're pushing the bowl down, through the rock, so it's underneath it. And then with the bounce up, you're tugging the bowl up, bringing the rock with it. As long as you picture it clearly enough, you shouldn't need the incantation at all. Okay?"
Violet nodded. She did the wide sideways swish, and like the tip of the wand was a pencil or something, picturing a curved line following... Except, that was just a flat line, she wanted a bowl. Frowning in concentration, she did the swish again, imagined the drawing of the bowl springing out of the tip, and then pressing it down, and then a little tug. Nothing happened, the rock staying exactly where it was, but she didn't expect it to work the first time. She tried it again, making sure to do the swishing perfectly smooth and even, focussing really hard on the drawing of the bowl, and down, and up...
"You have the image?" Violet blinked, glancing up at Mum — was she just supposed to be practising, and not actually doing it? A little confused, she nodded. "All right, good. Give me your hand. No, your wand hand." Very confused now, Violet switched her wand over to her off hand, and set her hand on Mum's. Her fingers wrapped around Violet's wrist, holding their palms together. "Now, I want you to push against my hand. Not physically, but with your magic."
Violet opened her mouth, but her throat was too tight and hot, the how? got caught in there somewhere.
"Are you trying to ask how to do that?" Trying not to squirm, feeling the warmth on her cheeks, Violet nodded. "When you change something, you can feel your magic, right? Feel it here," her other hand coming up over the middle of her chest. "For me it feels cool and sharp and tingly, like taking a big drink of ice water on a hot day — though I imagine it probably feels warm when you do it?"
Violet nodded — when she changed something it felt pretty nice, warm and soft and silky-smooth. Like bath water, with bubbles in it, running over and through her. Even back when Violet was scared of getting in trouble for doing something freakish, she still thought it felt nice.
Mum nodded back, "Good. I want you to concentrate, let that feeling fill you up inside. Not doing anything with it, don't try to change anything, just hold it inside of you...and then push, down your arm and against my hand."
...Okay. Violet let out a breath, and closed her eyes to concentrate. Honestly, she didn't think this was very hard to do? Mum did say before that getting the magic to work should be easy, because Violet technically did magic all the time already, but she wasn't used to doing magic stuff without changing something. She thought of that feeling, the nice warm water that flowed through her, but she didn't want it to flow, she wanted it to sit. Or, like, water going down a drain, swirling around, moving but still staying in the same place. Taking another long slow breath, she tried to relax, her head drooping down a little, sinking down, she could feel her breath whistling through her chest (which was kind of weird to feel) and her heart beating, and she imagined the magic spinning around, like warm silky smooth water, wrapped around her—
Violet was a little startled when she did start feeling the nice warm soft magic stuff — she immediately lost hold of it, the swirling water disappearing down the drain. But now that she found it once, it was easy to find it again. She just took another deep breath, feeling it move through her, and then felt the magic move through her. And she pushed, the warm smooth stuff zipping through her arm, tingling a little in her shoulder and her elbow and her hand, and—
Mum twitched, her eyes widened a little. "Oh! That was it! Very good, Violet. Okay, now, I want to see if you can hold it. Keep pushing, leaning against my hand, instead of just one hard shove."
That was a little harder to do, it took a few tries for Violet to get it right. But before too long, she had the warm soft tingly water swirling through her chest and flowing down her arm, pushing out through her hand against Mum's — once it hit her, the water started to feel cold, and sharp and crackly, and grinding, like two many loud noises overlapping at once. (It was unpleasant, shivering down Violet's back, she had to focus on keeping the water going, biting her lip.) Was that her magic getting into Mum's magic...?
"That's very good, Violet, that's exactly it. You can stop now." Violet let go, the water draining out of her again — it left her feeling a little cold, but she was pretty sure that was just in her head. "All right, pick up your wand again, and try pushing your magic into your wand."
After getting her magic to flow right without it, doing it with her wand was super super easy, she got it on the first try. The wood of the wand seemed to slurp it up, pulled out of her hand right inside — and the wand seemed to come alive once her magic was in it, warm and soft and, and, like petting a cat, breathing and purring against her fingers, or the feathers of a bird, smooth and fluttering. It was honestly a little weird, but at the same time she heard the soft little hiss, like dropping a slice of buttered bread onto a hot pan, and the sweet fruity-smelling steam, the same as when she first touched the wand, and it still smelled nice! "It's warm! And, and, and, it feels alive."
"Yeah, they can do that. The enchantments on wands are very complicated, and you put that much magic in one place and it'll light up like a bonfire at the smallest touch. It's not alive, not really — but you're alive, and the wand is taking in your magic and reflecting that feeling back at you."
...Oh. That was so cool! Magic was neat sometimes.
"Are you ready to try the spell?"
Violet tensed a little (nervous), but nodded.
"All right. Do exactly what you were doing before, focussing on the wand movement and the image of the bowl, but push your magic out into your wand at the same time. If you can't keep the flow going the whole time, that's fine. As long as the wand still feels alive in your hand, it should have enough of your magic in it to do the spell."
Right. Right, okay. Violet could do that. Or she could try, at least...
Focussing on pushing her magic out and making the imaginary bowl was awkward — the first time, Violet lost track of it switching between the sideways swish and the downward one, her wand going cold in her fingers. Oops. Okay, try that again, magic flowing through her, warm and smooth and nice, her wand purring and smelling all nice and fruity — the fruity smell was pears, she guessed, but she never really noticed that pears smelled like much of anything — doing the little dipping swish, imaging a nice wide bowl, and then pushing it down through the rock — and also into the table, but it was an imaginary magic bowl, so that was fine — and flick up—
There was a light tug, like someone was grabbing onto her hand and pulling just a little, the warm nice smooth water flowing through her rushing faster for just a second. And the rock, smoothly and gently, floated up off the table.
"Oh!" Mum gasped, her eyes going wide and her mouth splitting open in a toothy grin. "That's it! You got it on your first try!"
"Second try." She managed to get the words out, a little loosened up from the wand and the magic feeling nice, and also it looked like the spell worked without breaking anything, so...maybe she'd been all worried about nothing...
"Oh, well, second try then." Almost even rolling her eyes, like the difference didn't matter. "That's still wonderful, darling, come here." Mum leaned over across the table, brushing the little floating rock out of the way, to give her a kind of awkward hug.
Awkward because the table was in the way, and also Violet didn't really think she did anything that great? Like, it wasn't hard, she just had to do what Mum told her. Mum had explained what all the parts were one by one, and then she just did them all together...like, was that supposed to be hard? Focussing on the spell and pushing her magic along at the same time wasn't super easy, sure, and Violet was sure it'd be even worse if she had to try to get the incantation out too, in a language she didn't speak and trying not to stammer — honestly, she didn't quite believe that the incantation made things easier, since that made four things to think about instead of only three. So, she didn't think she did anything special.
But she didn't resist it, because hugs were nice. Though she thought the kiss on her forehead was maybe a little much. Honestly, she just made a little rock float...
Mum let go of her after a couple seconds, settling back down in her spot across the table. Looking over at the floating rock, a couple little twitches of her fingers made it drift back over to hover right between them, Mum still smiling. "That's really very good, Violet, on your first try..."
She still didn't really get what was so special about that — it was a super basic spell, and she was pretty sure magic was supposed to work when you did the thing correctly? "Second try."
"Regardless," Mum said, smirking a little. Was she being silly on purpose? Violet didn't get it, she thought she might be missing something... "I'll have to adjust our lessons a little, with building visualisation techniques in mind. If incantations are going to continue to be a problem."
"P-p-peh-probably." Kind of proving the point with the stammer there. "Did, did it come out r-rr-rright?"
"Looks like it. If the fairy magic in your soul was interfering with your magic somehow, the spell likely wouldn't have resolved properly at all. I can check quick, just to be sure..." Mum's wand was in her hand again, she cast some kind of spell at the floating rock. And then she went very still, freezing in place, not even seeming to breathe, staring at the rock with her face completely blank. After a few seconds she cast a second spell, and a third. A frown slowly building on her face, after the third spell, she muttered something under her breath — Violet didn't understand it, Cambrian.
"Um. Is something w-rr-wer– ugh..."
"One second, darling, I want to try something." Mum stood up and...walked away from the table? Violet leaned forward over the table a little, watching her as she went — straight out the door, for some reason. Just as Violet was wondering if she was going somewhere — and if she was, why she didn't close the door — when Mum was walking back inside, then closed the door behind her. She sat back down across from Violet, set a rock on the table. A real one, Violet thought, taken from the garden? "Go ahead and make this one float for me, darling."
...Okay? Violet cast the spell again — she already got it once, so she knew what she was doing now, it wasn't really hard. Once the rock was floating, Mum started casting more spells at it, and...
Something was wrong, but Violet couldn't see anything wrong? It seemed like the rock — and the conjured one, still floating there over the table — was doing exactly what it was supposed to. Eventually, Mum stopped casting more spells, and just sat there, frowning at the floating rock.
Violet waited for a bit, fidgeting, her fingers playing with the fuzzy hem of her jumper (it was cold and rainy today), but it didn't seem like Mum was working up to explaining. "What is it?"
Mum's eyes flicked over to hers, just for a second, before turning back to the rock. "This is permanent."
"...What?"
"The charm effect. It's as though you anchored levitation as an innate property through spectral alchemy, but it was only a basic charm."
That had a few magic words Violet didn't understand, but she thought Mum was saying the charm wasn't going to wear off on its own? It worked the way it was supposed to, it was just stuck. That...didn't sound so bad to Violet. The way the doctor person talked about it, she was worried about hurting someone or something... "Oh. Okay?"
"That should not be possible," Mum said, very firmly, an edge of...something on her voice, Violet wasn't sure what.
So, it was such a weird magic thing that even Mum didn't think it was possible? Mum didn't know all of the magic, sure, but that still...seemed like a lot. "Um, so. Um. That's the fairy m-magic, then?"
For a few more seconds, Mum just stared at the floating rocks. "...It must be — I certainly couldn't imagine anything else that could possibly explain this result. It's... I don't know if you recall, but we were told that the Avalonians integrated a self-reinforcing element into the structure of your soul — likely in an attempt to prevent any complications coming up afterward, but... Maybe, maybe that self-reinforcing effect propagates along your magic, and—"
Mum hissed under her breath — Cambrian again, probably swears. "That would explain what happened with Susan, when you triggered her Sight! It's the same phenomenon, your accidental healing reinforcing dormant aspects of her fundamental identity, the same property of your magic somehow altering the fundamental identity of the target to alchemise— Fuck me, I should have thought of that before..."
Another silence fell, but Violet had no idea what to say, just kept fidgeting with her jumper. She didn't understand most of that. Or, any of it, really. But, this didn't really seem like that bad of a problem? Honestly, Violet was worried about hurting people, her spells just not wearing off like they were supposed to seemed like a small thing. "Um. Is that rreally a b-bad thing? I mean..."
Mum looked away from the rock to give Violet a hard, cold, flat frown — Violet actually twitched a little, leaning away. "This is deadly serious, Violet. This is not the sort of gift that should be..." She glanced away for a second, before looking back, her face softened a bit. It also got a little warmer, Violet didn't even notice Mum's magic was starting to make the air cold until it stopped. "I'm sorry, darling, I... Some magics are not meant for mortal hands."
That was a funny thing, she wasn't really sure what Mum meant by that. And there was something about the way she was saying it, and how weird Mum was acting in general. Violet didn't really notice, but, "You're scared?" She hadn't noticed at first, because Mum was Mum, Violet didn't really think she was scared of anything.
"...Yes, I suppose I am. It... I'm not scared of you, Violet darling," Mum said, leaning across the table to take Violet's hand — her skin felt a little cold, sharp and snappy, her magic hissing just underneath. "I'm scared for you. It can be very inconvenient that charm effects and transfigurations just wear off, yes. The fact that we can't just conjure whatever we need is part of why mages still have an economy — we can't just make whatever we want out of nothing, it'll quickly disappear if we try. You have to really try to make magic stick, designing the magic to pull energy from whatever its attached to, or somehow alter the truth of a thing, with a curse or ritual magic, alchemy. And that can make life more difficult, it sets limits, it makes life just that little bit harder.
"But, darling, it also makes life safer. If you do some kind of magic, and you do it wrong and mess up something, you only have to wait a little bit and it wears off again. And not only that, you didn't charm these rocks," Mum said, nodding at them, still floating over the table, "you didn't put magic on them to make them float; you changed them, made it so the rocks are supposed to float. Like how we can change what magic thinks we're supposed to look like, it's the same idea. That's not something people are supposed to be able to do, not so easily. That's what alchemy is — Síomha's been studying alchemy for years, she's pretty good at it, and even she can't just change something with a simple spell like you did a minute ago."
Violet felt her eyes go wide, glancing over at the floating rocks. She... Now and then, she would see Síomha's books and huge stacks of papers, things she was working on — if she was coming over, or on a trip with them, but she had schoolwork to do, she'd bring it with, work on it when she had time. And it all looked super super complicated, filled with a whole bunch of alien-looking maths, charts and crazy geometrical figures, pages and pages and pages of the stuff. It looked hard.
Which, it was — Violet knew enough about the magical world now to know that alchemy was hard magic, which was kind of why Síomha got into it in the first place? She did just think it was neat, but also there weren't so many people who could do it well, she hoped she could make pretty good money with it. (Síomha's family wasn't, like, super poor or anything, not like the Starlighters, but they also didn't have as much money as even the families on their block here, on the poorer side of average.) Violet didn't know enough about magic, how the economy and stuff worked, to know why you could make good money doing alchemy, but if it was how you changed stuff, permanently, then she guessed that mades sense. She knew there were a lot of, like, paints and ceramics and stuff — and even, like, soap, little things — that had magic to them, but those couldn't be charms, they must do that with alchemy somehow...or maybe potions, she guessed...
She didn't know how she felt about doing an alchemy thing that Síomha, super-smart alchemy person, couldn't even do. "You mean, she c-c-couldn't make a rr-r-rr—"
"Make a rock float? No, she could do that, it would just take her longer — a few minutes at least, to design and perform a ritual. Even I could do it, and I'm not much for alchemy myself." Oh, well, that wasn't so bad then, Violet thought. At least it wasn't completely impossible, just a lot easier than it should be. "With a simple charm like that... This is dangerous, Violet, extremely dangerous. What if you imbue a property into something that ruins it, or breaks other things around, or could hurt someone? and can't be easily reversed?
"Actually, that's a good thought: let's see if you can reverse your own spells." Mum reached forward to the floating rocks, paused for a second before nudging one of them back over between them — the conjured one, Violet was pretty sure. "Okay, we're going to cancel the levitation charm on the rock. I know I said that the rock isn't charmed, that you changed what the rock is, but we're going to pretend like it's just a normal spell, okay? This one will be easier if you can actually say the incantation, though. Do you think you'll be able to manage finiat?"
"I think so..." Those weren't sounds she often had problems with, anyway. "Um, finiat?"
"Perfect, that's it. All right, so, spells have shapes to them — the magic has to move in a certain way and hold a certain pitch to... Static! A dispel is like static — you know, the black and white snow you see on a television that isn't tuned to anything? The random noise messes with the shape of the spell, and breaks it into pieces; once it can't hold its shape anymore, the spell fails, and the energy sinks back into the environment. Am I making any sense?"
Violet nodded — it was a little silly to think of different spells having shapes, or being like a song, when Mum mentioned holding a pitch, kind of weird and...trippy. But, if you went with that, saying you broke a spell by putting static into it and messing it up made perfect sense.
"Okay, so this wand movement is a bit simpler. You're going to jab at the target," Mum said, her wand stabbing out in front of her. She kind of startled Violet a little, didn't see it coming — the jab didn't get anywhere near Violet, but she still leaned to the side out of the way, on reflex. "Ah, I'm sorry, darling, didn't mean to surprise you. Anyway, the jab forward pushes the static out of your wand and into the spell you're trying to cancel, and then you yank back at an angle like this, pulling at the static and making it tear the spell apart. Fini," doing the jab, "at," doing the yank. "Finiat," faster, both parts together. "Got it? Violet nodded again. "Good. When you're doing the spell, imagine your static going into the levitation spell — your levitation spell is the target, not the rock itself. Picture the bowl from before, if that helps. Go ahead and give it a try, whenever yo're ready."
...Right. There were more things to keep track of this time, pushing the magic out and the wand movement and the imagining she had to do and also saying the special word, in time with the movement. Violet did it a couple times without the magic, all the other stuff, just to make sure she could picture it right, and get the movement and the word together right. Once she thought she had it, she pushed the magic out. And she got it right the first try — as the imaginary bowl was filled with static and then burst into sparks and disappeared, the rock fell to clunk against the table.
"Your first try again!" Mum said, a bit of a smile peeking through her very serious face. "That's excellent, Violet, truly."
First try again, but she'd gotten the levitation spell right on the second try. She'd already corrected Mum twice, by this point she was pretty sure Mum was doing that on purpose. For whatever reason, she didn't know, Mum was silly sometimes.
Mum picked up the rock, turned it around in her hand a little, tossed it up into the air — it fell like it was supposed to, Mum smoothly catching it as it came down. "Good, the spell is gone. And you even did it without disrupting the conjuration — that means you had very fine focus and intent, good work. I know this is turning into a serious matter instead of an easy fun lesson, but you are doing very well, Violet, honestly."
"It's okay," Violet said, shrugging. She knew learning magic was a big deal for mages and everything, but, honestly she was more worried about not accidentally hurting people. And she already did magic all the time, being a metamorph and all — learning to do spells was still neat, sure, but.
"Regardless." Mum set the rock aside with a little click of stone against wood. "At least you can reverse your own spells easily enough — that's good. If we had to try to design alchemy rituals to reverse some errant spell you did that was causing problems it... Well, that could get very complicated, very quickly. But you can reverse your own spells, that's...well, it's a bit of a relief, honestly. I still want you to be very careful with doing magic, okay? We don't know what funny effects your spells being permanent might cause, we're going to have to check everything over one by one. And I—" Her mouth hanging open, Mum's eyes went wide. And then she burst into curses, the air around her suddenly going cold and sharp and crackly, like a hard winter gust, lightning rumbling in the distance...
Violet was leaning far away from the table now, trying not to— She wasn't really scared, Mum wouldn't hurt her, but she almost forgot how bad her magic (dark magic) could feel sometimes. "Mum? You're speaking Cam-C-Cambrian." Probably because that was cursing and Mum mean for Violet to hear it anyway, but, mostly she was hoping Mum would stop making the room cold...
Mum cut herself, glancing at Violet for a second, before biting out a thick sigh. She leaned forward, her elbows on the table and her forehead leaning against her palms, and took a few slow, harsh breaths. As she did, the chill on the air faded, gradually, with each breath in and out. Once it was mostly back to normal, she muttered, "I apologise, Violet. I didn't mean to frighten you."
"I'm okay. It was only c-cold. Um. What's rr-r-wer– Ugh, stupid..."
Speaking over Violet grumbling to herself, Mum said, "I just thought of a...complication. I suspect you are going to have difficulty even so much as practising offensive magic — even minor schoolyard jinxes might have serious medical consequences if they are made permanent."
...So? "That's okay, I d-d-don't want to be hurting people anyway." What, did Mum think she was going to go around jinxing people just because she could now? Or, when she could, Mum didn't teach her any jinxes yet...
"Violet, darling, there are still any number of people out there who may wish to harm Harry Potter, should they have the opportunity. Though, if I'm being honest, I can't say I care much what might happen to some bastard out to kidnap or murder you. No matter what happens, if we do find out that you can't safely use magic on other people, I still want you to hex someone who is legitimately trying to harm you, Violet. In that situation, you getting away safe is more important than whatever happens to them. Can you do that?"
...
Well, if someone was really trying to hurt her, she guessed she might. She'd never really hurt someone before, but if she really had to... She wouldn't like it, but she would do it. "Yes, Mum, I will. I p-p-promise." Of course, now that she made a promise, she had to, but it was probably better for her magic to remind her, just in case. Though, she might not have needed to do that, it helped that she knew that Mum would not be okay if something happened to Violet. And Síomha and Susan, and Lasairín, and lots of people, probably...
(Violet never really thought before about how many people cared about her now, it was sort of funny to notice.)
Mum was frowning a little, because Violet made a promise, she thought — she was supposed to avoid doing that, Mum was worried she'd hurt herself — but she didn't say anything about that. Probably thought it was better for Violet's magic to remind her too. "Good. We will be learning some offensive magic later — I'm sorry, darling, I know you're not going to enjoy it, but it's simply not optional. You need to be able to protect yourself, if something happens and I'm not there. But we'll have to be very careful with that, and with everything else. For now, I would prefer you don't do any magic on your own, until we better understand how your fairy magic will influence your spells. I would also prefer you not tell anyone about this, or at least keep people who know to a minimum. Susan is fine, I suppose...and Síomha will likely need to know, as a safety precaution if nothing else..."
Violet felt herself frowning. She already wasn't planning on talking much about starting with wand magic with the neighbour kids. It was common in the nobility to start kids early, but not so much with normal people — none of the other kids her age on the block had a wand. Some of them would never get a wand, since not everyone went to academy anyway. Going off talking about it all the time would seem kind of, she didn't know, like she was bragging about being super rich or something? She didn't know, it just felt bad. So, she might not have mentioned it anyway, at least not with the neighbour kids, but she wouldn't have expected Mum to tell her not to talk about it. "Why?"
Mum sighed. "As I said, Violet — some magic is not meant for mortal hands. If people hear about this gift of yours, they are going to think it's very special. And by very special, I mean I would not be surprised if some people suspect it is literally a blessing from an actual god. I don't mean to frighten you, Violet, but currently-existing religions have started from less. Caution would be wise."
...Oh.
Um.
After a long moment just staring at Mum — her eyes wide and her mouth open, not really thinking anything, just, a big fuzzy blank — Violet stammered out, "M-m-mmaybe that's a, that's a, that's a, that– let's be c-c-c-ca-careful. Yeah."
(Religions have started from less, really, did she have to say that! That was a scary thing to say!)
Violet was maybe freaking out a little, but it was very obvious Mum was freaking out a little too — she was just better at hiding it, and didn't stammer like a useless idiot who couldn't even talk right. Their lesson wrapped up pretty quick after that. They never did get to the second spell Violet was supposed to learn today, but their lesson had gone completely crazy at some point, so that was fine. Mum had her take the levitation spell off the real rock she got from outside, which took a couple tries, all the stuff Mum said swirling around in her head, making it hard to concentrate. Once the rock was back to normal, Mum picked it up — to put it back where she got it, Violet guessed — flicked her wand at the conjured rock.
And then froze, giving the rock a double-take. She did a couple spells on the rock, after a bit said that it was real — she couldn't just break the conjuration and make it disappear, because it wasn't conjured anymore. Violet must have done that, but, she didn't even mean to? She just put the levitation spell on it and then took it off, like Mum said, she hadn't done anything else to it on purpose. So, making it a real rock was an accident. Oops?
When Violet admitted that, Mum burst into laughter — but it didn't feel like happy laughter, sharp and tight, covering her face with both hands. Like it might shift into crying instead at any second. Violet just sat there waiting for her to quiet down, her fingers playing with the hem of her jumper, her stomach squirming. She didn't know what Mum was thinking, exactly, but it didn't seem like it was very fun.
(Violet knew her magic being weird fairy stuff now wasn't really her fault, but she still felt guilty anyway.)
Oh shit! Turns out getting fairy magic in your soul can have unintended consequences. Who knew?
12 more scenes in the pre-Hogwarts arc. Next scene will also be relatively short, might be quick again, we'll see.