Chapter 151: A Study in Magic
3rd September 1995, Hogwarts (Earth 2)
(Harry Potter POV)
“Now, you’re thinking, as interesting as that is, why are we talking about this. What’s the point of this? It’s quite easy. Can anyone tell me what field of magic Defense Against the Dark Arts belongs to?”
For the first time, the students started to actually try to understand what Defense class was all about. It was odd. He hadn’t learnt a new spell, or even used magic, really, but he felt like he started to have a better understanding of magic after just a few minutes with Professor Sayre. He had to admit that Fred and George were right. The woman really knew her stuff.
Funnily enough, no one had raised their hand to answer that question. The question did make sense. What kind of magic were they learning in Defense? Even Hermione looked defeated, unable to answer a professor’s question for the first time.
Even more oddly was Ron raising his hand to answer, “Mr. Weasley, what is your answer?”
Ron looked confident at his answer for some reason, “Well, since the class is about fighting dark magic, then we’re learning light magic, right?”
The defense professor shook her head, “I’m afraid that both those statements are false. This class is not about fighting dark magic, it about being able to defend yourself from any magic. Because trust me, you can easily kill someone using light spells. I can see that most of you are really confused about this. Who here can tell me what dark magic or light magic is? And I’m not talking about the Ministry's definitions, but the magical classification of a spell. Why is a spell considered dark or light?”
A few people raised their hands, “Ms. Patil.”
Parvati answered hesitantly, “Dark spells are the ones that hurt and light spells are the ones that fight against dark magic.”
The professor looked around and asked, “and does anyone contest this definition?”
Greengrass raised her hand, “Yeah, you can very easily hurt people with a lot of magic that isn’t dark, and there has to be something more to light magic than just fighting against dark magic.”
“Very well, all of you. Ms. Greengrass is correct in this matter; the classification of a spell has nothing to do with the damage. The answer is pretty simple, light and darkness are elements, like fire, water, air and so on. Light magic is the manipulation of light, as in sunlight, but it has many properties when added to other spells, they focus on regeneration and creation. Darkness on the other focuses on the manipulation of shadows and has a property of destruction. Light magic is usually seen in healing spells, illusion magic, or certain obscure protection charms like the Patronus charm. I’m neglecting a lot of kinds of magic here, but you can easily kill a person by making light with a very strong intensity. Dark spells on the other hand, are spells geared towards destruction. Can anyone here tell me a dark spell that every student in this school knows?”
Silence met her and Harry was trying to digest the information he was told. Did they use Dark magic? Wasn’t it supposed to be evil and illegal?
The professor continued, “The stinging hex, is a spell taught to first years, and is considered dark magic. By definition, it contains the dark element, if you ever bothered to check the arithmancy formula. Now, there are a lot of other spells like the reductor curse, blasting curse, pretty much any jinx, hex or curse are dark magic. It doesn’t mean that using them are making you any eviler. Actually, most of the more horrifying curses are modified healing charms, where the light element was substituted with the dark one. Let’s take the blood boiling curse as an example. The curse is a modified blood warming charm invented in Finland to heal against hypothermia. The skill pealing curse, was originally a medical charm that painlessly removes infected tissue to be able to heal it properly without complication. You can see where this is going.”
Hermione raised her hand, “But then why do people consider dark magic to be dangerous?”
The professor smiled at her, “Good question. The danger of dark magic, or any elemental magic, really, is the emotional aspect of the spell. Every element can demand a certain mindset to make a spell function more easily. It’s like having a substitute power source outside of magic. Fire needs passion, water needs serenity, air needs swiftness, earth needs stubbornness, light needs happiness and love, and darkness needs hate and anger. It doesn’t mean that you can’t cast a dark spell without being angry, it means that being angry tends to supercharge the darkness element of the curse, meaning that it seems more powerful. If one were to use emotions to cast spells, you tend to associate your magic to the emotion in question. It’s not a big deal when dealing with a classical element, but it’s especially bad with dark magic, since you end up always being angry and hateful. It’s why it’s required to have a basic proficiency over occlumency, before attempting to learn proper elemental magic.”
Hermione still looked doubtful, “But that doesn’t make any sense. Magic follows an arithmetic formula, if you do the proper wand movement, and the incantation, there shouldn’t be any reason your feelings would change anything.”
Sayre looked disappointed, “You’re trying to think of magic logically. There’s nothing wrong with that at your current education, but you will have to realize one day, that trying to describe magic using logic, is like trying to hear a color, or smell a sound. It can probably be done, but it would be so complicated and inaccurate that it wouldn’t mean much. Magic is chaotic, imprecise and random. Us, humans, are logical creatures, which is why we try to give order to this chaos, to channel a fraction of a fraction of what’s possible. Casting basic magic using logic isn’t a big deal, but the more advanced something is, the less logical it is. When you’re dealing with higher magics, logic doesn’t even factor in at all. It’s why wizards tend to be eccentric and illogical, at times, especially if they experimented with higher magics. Now, we got a little bit off topic. Now that we fully understand what dark and light magic are, who here can tell me what fields of magic are used in our defense class.”
Seamus raised his hand, “You said that the reductor curse was on there, so I’m guessing we use dark magic.”
“Good, what else?”
Pansy Parkinson answered this time, “We use shield charms, so charms would be an answer.”
“Very good, Ms. Parkinson. Truth be told, we could use any field of magic, because Defense in itself, is not an actual field of magic, it’s the practical application of magic to defend yourself. It was used to be called battle magic a couple of centuries back, until a headmaster who had fought in a war thought that it was too aggressive, so they changed the name to magical defense. The title was later changed to defense against the dark arts after a light fanatic headmaster, thought it was a more appropriate title. Alas, with how behind you actually are, we won’t get to explore the lessons properly, and will focus on what’s more likely to be in your OWLs. I’m going to start the next few weeks by doing a small revision on the basics of what you were supposed to have learnt during the last few years, and I’m afraid that it would take you a lot of self study to catch up. Let’s start with the basics, charms.
“At its base, charms are a modification to a state of an inanimate or animate being. Charming a feather to fly, means that we change its state from normal to floating. That’s what a charm is. Now, one of the most basic and arguably the most important charms you need to know is the disarming charm.”
Harry could hear the groans from the back, and he had to agree, this was really basic stuff.
The professor seemed to notice the matter, “I know that this is too simple, but this is an important spell, that not everyone has mastered. Tell you what, after I’m done explaining and you perform the spell perfectly, I will personally teach you one of my personal spells that I have invented. Now, that you’ve settled down, the disarming charm is quite simple, it’s a simple piece of magic that makes someone's state to be disarmed. It doesn’t have to be a wand in your opponent’s hand, but anything that you could consider a weapon, a book, a ball, anything really. But the most remarkable part of that spell is actually the fact that it works on spells too, not just people.”
Harry was confused. Wait what? How can you disarm a spell?
The woman continued, “It’s quite easy, if you’re able to hit a spell with a disarming charm, it will be redirected, either towards its caster or somewhere else. But that’s in the case of a spell that’s not actively powered, meaning that the caster is not giving up control over. If it does hit an actively powered spell and you keep powering the spell, you end up in what we call a battle of wills, where the person with the strongest conviction slowly gets the upper hand before triumphing. These tend to be rare, but it can happen, the disarming charm is a very powerful counter to a lot of powerful magics, especially against spells that you do not recognize. There is also a dark variant of the spell, that we will not cover, that literarily disarms the opponent, meaning that it tears their arms off. Impressive, for a good spell, right?”
Every student in that classroom had frozen at the implication of the spell, and its possible uses. No one even thought about having this much of a detailed study over what should be a second year spell.
Now, Draco Malfoy of all people asked a question, “What about an unforgivable? Would the spell stop one?”
The professor shook her head, “There are thousands of spells that are more terrible than the unforgivables, what makes these spells so frowned upon, is not their effects, but the fact that they cannot be shielded against. Of course, this is because the unforgivables are soul magic spells, not dark ones. They’re very crude and would be considered an atrocity for anyone who had studied soul magic properly. Soul magic operates under a different plane altogether, and the reason that it can’t be shielded from, is because there are no wand based spells that shield the soul. Soul magic having been extinct before wands were actually invented. It’s not impossible to create a soul shield, and I would use the Patronus charm as a base if I chose to create one, but one would need a lot of study into soul magic to do so. That said, if there is an external reason, especially dealing with soul magic or something similar, it could allow a disarming charm to have enough of an astral presence to fight off an unforgivable curse. But in this scenario, it would be a very specific case, that we can’t use as a reference for this situation.”
Malfoy didn’t relent, “But what about Potter, how did he survive the killing curse?”
“Well, considering that no one really knows the exact events, I couldn’t tell you. But from my research, this wasn’t the result of some freak accident, but of Lily Potter’s brilliance. Hypothesizing from what is commonly known, she must have done a ritual in advance, considering that Mr. Potter’s scar is a rune, and didn’t power it until she was attacked. She somehow used her own lifeforce as a sacrifice to protect her son against any kind of magic from her attacker, including a killing curse. A life for a life, an equivalent exchange, like any kind of magic. I don’t think that the survival of Mr. Potter is a credit to him, he was barely one years old, after all, but a credit to his mother’s brilliance. It was a trap laid by a desperate mother’s love that brought down a dark lord in his prime.”
Harry’s eyes were misty at the end of the explanation. No one had ever given his mother credit, people always credited him for Voldemort’s defeat and not his mother. It was nice to see his mother’s sacrifice be acknowledged for once.
The rest of the lesson was spent with the professor putting them in pairs and having them perform the disarming charm, first on the other person’s wand and then on an incoming spell. Harry was able to do both, but when he tried to make a battle of wills, both spells sort of fizzled.
Still, it had been one of the best Defense lessons that he ever had, without question, and he came out with an actual passion to learn more about Defense and even Magic in general.
It was only after the bell rang that the professor called out, “Mr. Potter, Mr. Longbottom, please stay in the classroom. I would like to have a word with you both.”
Chapter 151: A Study in Magic
3rd September 1995, Hogwarts (Earth 2)
(Harry Potter POV)
“Now, you’re thinking, as interesting as that is, why are we talking about this. What’s the point of this? It’s quite easy. Can anyone tell me what field of magic Defense Against the Dark Arts belongs to?”
For the first time, the students started to actually try to understand what Defense class was all about. It was odd. He hadn’t learnt a new spell, or even used magic, really, but he felt like he started to have a better understanding of magic after just a few minutes with Professor Sayre. He had to admit that Fred and George were right. The woman really knew her stuff.
Funnily enough, no one had raised their hand to answer that question. The question did make sense. What kind of magic were they learning in Defense? Even Hermione looked defeated, unable to answer a professor’s question for the first time.
Even more oddly was Ron raising his hand to answer, “Mr. Weasley, what is your answer?”
Ron looked confident at his answer for some reason, “Well, since the class is about fighting dark magic, then we’re learning light magic, right?”
The defense professor shook her head, “I’m afraid that both those statements are false. This class is not about fighting dark magic, it about being able to defend yourself from any magic. Because trust me, you can easily kill someone using light spells. I can see that most of you are really confused about this. Who here can tell me what dark magic or light magic is? And I’m not talking about the Ministry's definitions, but the magical classification of a spell. Why is a spell considered dark or light?”
A few people raised their hands, “Ms. Patil.”
Parvati answered hesitantly, “Dark spells are the ones that hurt and light spells are the ones that fight against dark magic.”
The professor looked around and asked, “and does anyone contest this definition?”
Greengrass raised her hand, “Yeah, you can very easily hurt people with a lot of magic that isn’t dark, and there has to be something more to light magic than just fighting against dark magic.”
“Very well, all of you. Ms. Greengrass is correct in this matter; the classification of a spell has nothing to do with the damage. The answer is pretty simple, light and darkness are elements, like fire, water, air and so on. Light magic is the manipulation of light, as in sunlight, but it has many properties when added to other spells, they focus on regeneration and creation. Darkness on the other focuses on the manipulation of shadows and has a property of destruction. Light magic is usually seen in healing spells, illusion magic, or certain obscure protection charms like the Patronus charm. I’m neglecting a lot of kinds of magic here, but you can easily kill a person by making light with a very strong intensity. Dark spells on the other hand, are spells geared towards destruction. Can anyone here tell me a dark spell that every student in this school knows?”
Silence met her and Harry was trying to digest the information he was told. Did they use Dark magic? Wasn’t it supposed to be evil and illegal?
The professor continued, “The stinging hex, is a spell taught to first years, and is considered dark magic. By definition, it contains the dark element, if you ever bothered to check the arithmancy formula. Now, there are a lot of other spells like the reductor curse, blasting curse, pretty much any jinx, hex or curse are dark magic. It doesn’t mean that using them are making you any eviler. Actually, most of the more horrifying curses are modified healing charms, where the light element was substituted with the dark one. Let’s take the blood boiling curse as an example. The curse is a modified blood warming charm invented in Finland to heal against hypothermia. The skill pealing curse, was originally a medical charm that painlessly removes infected tissue to be able to heal it properly without complication. You can see where this is going.”
Hermione raised her hand, “But then why do people consider dark magic to be dangerous?”
The professor smiled at her, “Good question. The danger of dark magic, or any elemental magic, really, is the emotional aspect of the spell. Every element can demand a certain mindset to make a spell function more easily. It’s like having a substitute power source outside of magic. Fire needs passion, water needs serenity, air needs swiftness, earth needs stubbornness, light needs happiness and love, and darkness needs hate and anger. It doesn’t mean that you can’t cast a dark spell without being angry, it means that being angry tends to supercharge the darkness element of the curse, meaning that it seems more powerful. If one were to use emotions to cast spells, you tend to associate your magic to the emotion in question. It’s not a big deal when dealing with a classical element, but it’s especially bad with dark magic, since you end up always being angry and hateful. It’s why it’s required to have a basic proficiency over occlumency, before attempting to learn proper elemental magic.”
Hermione still looked doubtful, “But that doesn’t make any sense. Magic follows an arithmetic formula, if you do the proper wand movement, and the incantation, there shouldn’t be any reason your feelings would change anything.”
Sayre looked disappointed, “You’re trying to think of magic logically. There’s nothing wrong with that at your current education, but you will have to realize one day, that trying to describe magic using logic, is like trying to hear a color, or smell a sound. It can probably be done, but it would be so complicated and inaccurate that it wouldn’t mean much. Magic is chaotic, imprecise and random. Us, humans, are logical creatures, which is why we try to give order to this chaos, to channel a fraction of a fraction of what’s possible. Casting basic magic using logic isn’t a big deal, but the more advanced something is, the less logical it is. When you’re dealing with higher magics, logic doesn’t even factor in at all. It’s why wizards tend to be eccentric and illogical, at times, especially if they experimented with higher magics. Now, we got a little bit off topic. Now that we fully understand what dark and light magic are, who here can tell me what fields of magic are used in our defense class.”
Seamus raised his hand, “You said that the reductor curse was on there, so I’m guessing we use dark magic.”
“Good, what else?”
Pansy Parkinson answered this time, “We use shield charms, so charms would be an answer.”
“Very good, Ms. Parkinson. Truth be told, we could use any field of magic, because Defense in itself, is not an actual field of magic, it’s the practical application of magic to defend yourself. It was used to be called battle magic a couple of centuries back, until a headmaster who had fought in a war thought that it was too aggressive, so they changed the name to magical defense. The title was later changed to defense against the dark arts after a light fanatic headmaster, thought it was a more appropriate title. Alas, with how behind you actually are, we won’t get to explore the lessons properly, and will focus on what’s more likely to be in your OWLs. I’m going to start the next few weeks by doing a small revision on the basics of what you were supposed to have learnt during the last few years, and I’m afraid that it would take you a lot of self study to catch up. Let’s start with the basics, charms.
“At its base, charms are a modification to a state of an inanimate or animate being. Charming a feather to fly, means that we change its state from normal to floating. That’s what a charm is. Now, one of the most basic and arguably the most important charms you need to know is the disarming charm.”
Harry could hear the groans from the back, and he had to agree, this was really basic stuff.
The professor seemed to notice the matter, “I know that this is too simple, but this is an important spell, that not everyone has mastered. Tell you what, after I’m done explaining and you perform the spell perfectly, I will personally teach you one of my personal spells that I have invented. Now, that you’ve settled down, the disarming charm is quite simple, it’s a simple piece of magic that makes someone's state to be disarmed. It doesn’t have to be a wand in your opponent’s hand, but anything that you could consider a weapon, a book, a ball, anything really. But the most remarkable part of that spell is actually the fact that it works on spells too, not just people.”
Harry was confused. Wait what? How can you disarm a spell?
The woman continued, “It’s quite easy, if you’re able to hit a spell with a disarming charm, it will be redirected, either towards its caster or somewhere else. But that’s in the case of a spell that’s not actively powered, meaning that the caster is not giving up control over. If it does hit an actively powered spell and you keep powering the spell, you end up in what we call a battle of wills, where the person with the strongest conviction slowly gets the upper hand before triumphing. These tend to be rare, but it can happen, the disarming charm is a very powerful counter to a lot of powerful magics, especially against spells that you do not recognize. There is also a dark variant of the spell, that we will not cover, that literarily disarms the opponent, meaning that it tears their arms off. Impressive, for a good spell, right?”
Every student in that classroom had frozen at the implication of the spell, and its possible uses. No one even thought about having this much of a detailed study over what should be a second year spell.
Now, Draco Malfoy of all people asked a question, “What about an unforgivable? Would the spell stop one?”
The professor shook her head, “There are thousands of spells that are more terrible than the unforgivables, what makes these spells so frowned upon, is not their effects, but the fact that they cannot be shielded against. Of course, this is because the unforgivables are soul magic spells, not dark ones. They’re very crude and would be considered an atrocity for anyone who had studied soul magic properly. Soul magic operates under a different plane altogether, and the reason that it can’t be shielded from, is because there are no wand based spells that shield the soul. Soul magic having been extinct before wands were actually invented. It’s not impossible to create a soul shield, and I would use the Patronus charm as a base if I chose to create one, but one would need a lot of study into soul magic to do so. That said, if there is an external reason, especially dealing with soul magic or something similar, it could allow a disarming charm to have enough of an astral presence to fight off an unforgivable curse. But in this scenario, it would be a very specific case, that we can’t use as a reference for this situation.”
Malfoy didn’t relent, “But what about Potter, how did he survive the killing curse?”
“Well, considering that no one really knows the exact events, I couldn’t tell you. But from my research, this wasn’t the result of some freak accident, but of Lily Potter’s brilliance. Hypothesizing from what is commonly known, she must have done a ritual in advance, considering that Mr. Potter’s scar is a rune, and didn’t power it until she was attacked. She somehow used her own lifeforce as a sacrifice to protect her son against any kind of magic from her attacker, including a killing curse. A life for a life, an equivalent exchange, like any kind of magic. I don’t think that the survival of Mr. Potter is a credit to him, he was barely one years old, after all, but a credit to his mother’s brilliance. It was a trap laid by a desperate mother’s love that brought down a dark lord in his prime.”
Harry’s eyes were misty at the end of the explanation. No one had ever given his mother credit, people always credited him for Voldemort’s defeat and not his mother. It was nice to see his mother’s sacrifice be acknowledged for once.
The rest of the lesson was spent with the professor putting them in pairs and having them perform the disarming charm, first on the other person’s wand and then on an incoming spell. Harry was able to do both, but when he tried to make a battle of wills, both spells sort of fizzled.
Still, it had been one of the best Defense lessons that he ever had, without question, and he came out with an actual passion to learn more about Defense and even Magic in general.
It was only after the bell rang that the professor called out, “Mr. Potter, Mr. Longbottom, please stay in the classroom. I would like to have a word with you both.”
