As the System’s voice faded, Eric suddenly felt a light, almost weightless sensation wash over his entire body.
Detailed knowledge of the Patronus Charm appeared in his mind, the incantation, the wand movements, and even the experience accumulated by countless witches and wizards who had practised the spell before him.
At that moment, Eric understood completely how the Patronus Charm worked.
The floating sensation lingered for quite some time, leaving his thoughts clearer and more active than ever before.
He knew he had fully learned the Patronus Charm.
Along with the knowledge of how to cast it, Eric also came to understand just how difficult the spell truly was.
At the very least, there was absolutely no chance it would be taught as part of Hogwarts’ current curriculum.
For one thing, the Patronus Charm was genuinely difficult.
To cast it properly, a witch or wizard needed sufficiently powerful magic.
At the same time, the caster had to summon a strong enough feeling of genuine happiness while performing the spell.
Only by satisfying both conditions was it possible to successfully conjure a Patronus.
Those two requirements alone were enough to stop the vast majority of people.
A wizard whose magic was too weak wouldn’t be able to summon a Patronus even if they memorised the incantation perfectly.
In the original story, Harry Potter hadn’t learned the Patronus Charm until his third year.
And even then, it was only because he urgently needed a spell capable of protecting him from Dementors.
Otherwise, he might never have had the opportunity to learn about the Patronus Charm at all.
A lot of people looked down on Harry Potter’s magical ability because of things like that.
Some even jokingly called him a human Disarming Charm launcher, since no matter what sort of battle he found himself in, he always seemed to fall back on the same Expelliarmus.
But now that Eric properly understood the Patronus Charm, he knew that assessment was far from fair.
Compared with his classmates, Harry Potter could absolutely be considered an exceptionally talented wizard when it came to practical spellcasting.
At the very least, Harry’s actual casting experience ranked among the best of the students at Hogwarts.
And in a fight, anyone would naturally favour the spell they knew best.
Harry was extremely proficient with the Disarming Charm.
If it worked, why wouldn’t he use it?
Even with his talent for spellcasting, Harry had still needed nearly an entire term of practice before he could successfully conjure a Patronus.
The other reason the Patronus Charm wasn’t widely known was simply that its practical applications were rather limited.
Its most important use was undoubtedly its ability to repel Dementors.
The spell was formed entirely from positive, joyful emotion, making it the natural enemy of Dementors.
Dementors could drain positive emotions from witches and wizards, but they had no such way of dealing with a Patronus conjured through magic.
Because of that limited application, many adult witches and wizards had never even heard of the spell.
Only certain witches and wizards whose work required them to deal specifically with Dementors would go out of their way to learn it.
The Patronus Charm’s other major use was carrying messages.
Eric already knew all of that.
And as far as he was concerned, those two uses were more than enough.
If nothing unexpected happened, he would have plenty of opportunities to encounter Dementors during the coming school year.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ “Merlin!
Thank you!
Thank you so much!” While Eric was lost in thought, an excited voice abruptly pulled him back to reality.
He turned and saw Mercer, the owner of Flourish and Blotts.
Mercer was covered from head to toe in dust.
His clothes were horribly wrinkled, his face was flushed bright red, and faint traces of the Monster Books’ earlier attacks could still be seen on him.
At the moment, though, he couldn’t have cared less about his injuries.
He scrambled to his feet and hurried straight over to Eric, loudly expressing his gratitude.
After the chaos that had just occurred, none of the surrounding witches and wizards dared approach Eric.
Mercer, however, was different.
As far as he was concerned, Eric’s appearance had been nothing short of a miracle.
Mercer had already been on the verge of despair.
Neither he nor his employees had possessed any way of controlling this newly arrived shipment of Monster Books.
If Eric hadn’t stepped in, Mercer would probably have lost everything he’d invested in them.
He might have ended up losing the shirt off his back.
Thanks to Eric, however, at least half of the Monster Books had been salvaged.
Even as he hurried towards Eric, Mercer shouted instructions at his equally stunned employees to gather the books up at once.
He had absolutely no desire to experience another Monster Book uprising.
“Those damned Monster Books!
Merlin, if you hadn’t been here—” Eric raised a hand, interrupting Mercer’s excited rambling with a smile.
“Mr Mercer, I was only trying something.
To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what would happen beforehand either.” “No!
Whatever the case, you’ve done me an enormous favour.” Mercer showed no sign of slowing down.
“Oh!
I don’t even know your name yet, young sir.” Eric smiled.
“I’m Eric Clapton.
I’ll be starting at Hogwarts this year.” The moment the words left his mouth, the surroundings fell silent.
Mercer wasn’t the only person listening to their conversation.
The other witches and wizards had been paying close attention as well.
And now that they had heard Eric reveal his identity, and learned that he was actually a young wizard who hadn’t even started Hogwarts yet, how could they possibly remain calm?
A child who hadn’t even entered school had nearly blown up part of Diagon Alley!
Mercer opened his mouth to say something else, but another voice suddenly cut in.
“Gentlemen!
Could we perhaps find somewhere a little less conspicuous to continue this conversation?
I would rather not end up at the Ministry explaining myself to a pack of Aurors.” Eric and Mercer both turned.
Tom stood nearby with his weathered face screwed up miserably.
He looked every bit as dishevelled as Mercer, and even speaking seemed to take some effort.
Diagon Alley was one of the busiest commercial areas in the whole of wizarding Britain.
After a disturbance this large, the Aurors were almost certainly already on their way.
Having said that, Tom made as though to leave.
Then he noticed that Eric was still standing where he was.
Tom stopped immediately and stared at him nervously.
What are you still doing?
Move, for Merlin’s sake, you little menace!
As the only person present who had personally experienced both of Eric’s magical outbursts, Tom now became tense whenever he saw that thoughtful expression on the boy’s face.
Please don’t do it a third time.
He genuinely didn’t think he could take another one.
“I’ve caused quite a lot of trouble,” Eric said after thinking for a moment.
“Won’t the Ministry come after me?” Tom had already considered that question.
He sighed.
“No one is going to believe that a child who doesn’t even own a wand can deliberately release magic powerful enough to cause something like this.
Theoretically speaking, at your age, being unable to control your natural magic is perfectly normal.
We simply need to tell the Aurors that’s what happened.” “And if someone really insists on assigning responsibility, then it won’t fall on you.
It’ll fall on your guardian within the wizarding world.” Tom paused.
“In other words…” “Me.” By the time he finished speaking, his expression had grown even more miserable.
He looked as though he’d just swallowed an entire bottle of Polyjuice Potion.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📣 Announcement!📣 I just uploaded another new story, it’s another Harry Potter fanfiction!
The story is called Harry Potter: I Thought Dumbledore Was a Dungeon Boss.
This one is more of a comedy story.
The MC is still a transmigrator and has a system.
The problem is, he knows absolutely nothing about Harry Potter, and his very first quest is to kill Grindelwald and Dumbledore.
Because of this ridiculous quest, he ends up dying hundreds of times.
Don’t forget to check it out!
I hope you enjoy the new story!
⚡✨ CREATORS’ THOUGHTS Hidden_Quill Thank you so much for reading!