I slowly walked through Prague’s main railway station, admiring the creation of Muggle hands.
Though one shouldn’t discount the involvement of wizards in the station’s construction; it mostly concerned the enchantments for space and concealment, hiding the magical platforms built alongside the Muggle ones.
And now, once again, I had the opportunity to enjoy the beauty of architectural art created by Muggle masters.
After so many years.
I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the air rich with various scents.
The aromas of food being sold, women’s perfumes, the distant but now clearly discernible creosote used to coat the sleepers, and the sweat of workers.
In the past, I had often cursed my sensitive nose, my peculiar magical gift.
Some people can talk to snakes, others get along famously with any plant, and some can perceive magic as melody.
I got a sensitive nose.
Oh, how I hated this gift or curse.
Especially during my first Potions lessons.
Many young wizards and witches already disliked this art, which required patience and attention when there were more visual subjects like DADA, Charms, and Transfiguration.
For me, these lessons were doubly unpleasant.
You’d take, say, the intestine of some African Stinktoad, which you need to slice crosswise to add to an anti-wrinkle potion, and you’re cutting it on the table, but it feels like it’s already been shoved up your nostrils.
And so on with everything.
Much later, I learned to cope with it and even perceive magic through scents.
Without stopping, I walked through the stationary portal leading to Platform 4 and 3/4.
The sound of a train’s horn hit my ears.
Around me, colorful robes of wizards flashed by, chatting, laughing, casting spells, seeing off, and saying goodbye to their friends, acquaintances, or relatives.
A few aristocrats stood out to the side, especially a white-haired mother and daughter accompanied by their guards.
My hand tightened on my suitcase handle, personally enchanted with spatial expansion, while my instincts screamed at me to cast even more protective charms and finally shed this “illusion” that some creature had draped over me.
I used my Occlumency shields to their fullest, taking complete control of my reactions and feelings.
I analyzed the incoming signals from my senses while simultaneously creating counter-charms and dispelling spells with sheer force of will.
The face of a pleasant-looking middle-aged woman nearby suddenly acquired a few wrinkles and a couple of prominent pimples, causing confusion among the wizards standing nearby and a few caustic comments from the witches.
I ignored the brewing argument and continued walking toward the rear passenger cars of the train.
The radiant Lockhart smile on my face only flickered for a moment as I passed one of the workers.
A mixture of scents hit my nose: wet dog and night forest.
A werewolf.
Whatever.
It wasn’t the Cataclysm; these creatures only turned into bloodthirsty, fanged monsters during the full moon.
I showed my shimmering gold ticket to the Squib conductor standing at the carriage entrance.
With a click, his puncher stamped my ticket.
I sidestepped a wizard trying to haul a large trunk inside, who had clearly forgotten about his wand and his entire Charms education.
Contempt flickered inside me, quickly replaced by indifference and attentiveness.
What if this wizard had some kind of quirk, and was actually a retired Auror who could give a dozen ordinary wizards a run for their money?
I stopped in front of my compartment and opened the door.
My eyes fell on a snoring man, sprawled comfortably across the seat, his head resting on a pillow that had clearly been Transfigured.
Such carelessness.
Satisfied there were no “surprises,” I sat down on the opposite seat and pulled a book from my suitcase.
I cast a couple of alert charms and immersed myself in the world of formulas and physical laws described in one of the books used by students at the Czech Technical University, the oldest technical university in Central Europe.
Before buying my ticket to Germany, I’d bought a whole pile of physics textbooks used by Muggles.
Before, as someone born into a wizarding family, I’d only skimmed the subjects taught to Muggles to get my bearings in their world.
After all, magic doesn’t care about physics or chemistry.
You draw a chain of runes for weightlessness on a chair, and voilà, that object doesn’t care about the planet’s gravity for the next twenty years or more, depending on the materials.
It was only during the Cataclysm, when I read the diary of an enthusiastic wizard interested in Muggle achievements, that I noticed some curious formulas he’d derived for spells.
In the magical world, the orthodox system of magic is the Roman one, thanks to its universality and accessibility.
Its foundation rests on two things: Arithmancy and Ancient Runes.
What does a classical wizard do, essentially?
He makes a “flick” with his wand, shouts some words, and adds a mental impulse.
Need to adapt a spell for cutting fingernails to one for cutting toenails?
You take reference books, where magical patterns and runes are written down, break your spell down into its components, where each wand movement and word is associated with a specific rune, then start replacing them with another rune, which will be associated with a different movement or word, all while trying to avoid mutually exclusive runes or inserting a rune that will stop their “mutual exclusion.” And you visualize the desired outcome of the magic.
At this point, many wizards sooner or later ask a question.
Why bother with all this?
Children, after all, performed magical outbursts without worrying about formulas and runes.
Sure, but after age eleven, triggering a spontaneous magical outburst takes some serious effort.
A child could, in theory, learn to cast spells without a magical focus or incantations.
But a child of average talent would spend about five years learning the spells of the first two years of Hogwarts.
Why?
By itself, it can’t do anything.
To get it to move in a non-standard way without “crutches” requires truly titanic effort.
And that’s where magical foci and runes come in.
Take the most common magical focus, the wand.
Everyone always pays attention to three things: the wood, the core, and the length.
The wood focuses the magic, the core acts as a catalyst that sets the magic in motion, and the length depends on the wizard’s individual characteristics and thinking style.
In short, the wand solves the problem of magic’s “inertia.”
The problem of “neutrality” is solved by runes.
Or, more precisely, by incantations.
Dumbledore could quite successfully curse someone by pointing his wand and saying “fuck you.” But if a first-year did that, at best there’d be a fizzle and the other students would laugh.
Why does it work for Dumbledore, and not for the first-year?
It’s very simple.
Modern English, Latin, the Futhark runes, Egyptian runes, Chinese characters, the scripts of African shamans, these are all LANGUAGES.
And language is information, concepts, images, and ideas.
Everything any sentient being says, writes, or thinks in any language leaves a trace in the world.
An example, an image, a description that Roman wizards used to their advantage.
Everything a wizard says or does has magical power.
The stronger the wizard, the more distinct the “trace” left in the world.
And the stronger the resonance between identical “traces.” This resonance allows first-years to learn spells in a couple of hours.
By pronouncing incantations and making wand gestures, they create one or more “traces” that resonate with other “traces.” Through this resonance, the first-years subconsciously perceive all these examples, images, and descriptions, instinctively beginning to understand how to achieve the desired outcome from the “visual example.”
For someone like Dumbledore, this resonance is no longer needed for learned spells; his magical power has “remembered” the spell’s template.
But most wizards still rely on this resonance when creating spells.
Even skilled wizards don’t refuse this “help.” In theory, it might be possible to cast a spell “correctly” once and then cast it at Merlin’s level afterward.
Theoretically.
If you fully take control of your subconscious and are physically and mentally prepared to understand the mindset and emotions of one of history’s most powerful wizards during the creation of a spell.
Why this complicated topic, which 95% of today’s wizards understand as well as most Muggles understand quantum physics?
Well, in that wizard-enthusiast’s diary, there were spells in which Muggle physical laws served as the “language.” And it would seem, what’s the big deal?
So he changed the “language” to a less convenient one for creating resonance, big deal.
I thought that too, until I decided, out of curiosity, to use these “non-traditional” spells.
One burning spell and one freezing spell.
They weren’t stronger than the analogous spells I performed in the “classical” language.
They simply COMPLETELY BECAME a physical phenomenon.
What does that give me?
The ability to burn a troll, ignoring its magic resistance!
To pierce magical shields that don’t expect such a “surprise” from enemies.
To leave no magical traces of spells!
Now that I have free time, I just need to understand.
HOW THE HELL DID THAT HAPPEN?
The sleeping wizard on the opposite seat snorted, rolled over onto his other side, and continued to sleep to the rhythmic rocking of the train.
Exhaustion descended on my consciousness.
The dry formulas and laws, with which Muggles, seeing only a few facets of reality, try to describe the multifaceted universe, seemed just as meaningless.
What was the point of these invented frameworks for our ever-changing world, which in a decade would likely be nothing more than a crypt with living dead who thought they were normal?
How was I supposed to save everyone from this nightmare?
How?
The weight of sleep began to press down on my eyelids.
I closed my eyes and immediately opened them.
I noticed a strange scent, a spell’s aroma, mixed in among the dozens of enchantments on the train.
I reached out to the sleeping wizard and grabbed him by the collar.
Smack.
The man’s head lolled to the side from the slap, but he didn’t wake up.
I let him go and opened the door.
The corridor was empty.
Only a very familiar smell reached me.
The smell of blood.
I turned my head toward the front of the train.
A wand appeared in my hand.
Maybe today I’d get “material” for a new Lockhart book?
I grimly smiled at my own dark humor.
Protective spell layers flickered around my body, and I began moving toward the first cars.
In the compartments where people were, Morpheus reigned supreme.
The strong wouldn’t fall for such a trick, and the weak would only get in the way.
I opened the door to the next car, and the sound of a gunshot, accompanied by a woman’s scream, hit my ears.
With a dull thud, a woman’s body hit the floor.
I froze in a stupor at the scene before me.
Smoke rose from the gleaming, magically sparkling barrel of a Colt revolver clutched in the hand of a red-haired man with a smirk on his face.
Dressed in a white coat and a black bowler hat, he spun the cane in his other hand.
“Bag the mother and daughter, and take care of the witnesses.
And finally finish off the old man.”
The two men and one woman in nondescript clothing standing in the doorway of a compartment nearby nodded.
A pool of blood spread beneath their feet from three dead wizards, two in grey robes and one in a conductor’s uniform.
“Y-you won’t touch the lady or her daughter.”
The grey-haired man near the exit of the car coughed.
Dressed in a butler’s uniform and covered in blood from his wounds, he could barely stand.
The subordinates of the red-haired man warily eyed the silver knife engraved with runes clenched in his hand.
But none of them concerned me.
Because I was staring at the girl lying on the floor in front of me.
Brown hair and brown eyes.
Clutching her shot shoulder, she gritted her teeth in pain.
The scent of lilac reached my nose.
Such an old, familiar scent that I’d almost forgotten it, despite all my Occlumency and mind magic skills.
Too much pain came with those memories of home and family.
Where did she come from?
Another illusion?
A Boggart deciding to play with my fears?
“Damn it.”
The girl hissed, reaching for her wand, which had fallen from her hand.
The wand of the wizard in typical wizard’s attire began to move.
The grey-haired man in the butler’s uniform bent his knees for a quick lunge.
And I couldn’t move.
My hand tightly gripped the cherry wand.
Real or not?
Real or not?
Hallucination?
Another delusion of a fevered mind?
Nightmare or reality?
Why is she here?
Real or not?
Real or not?
Real or not?
REAL OR NOT?
“What are you waiting for, idiot?
Run!”
The girl shouted angrily, her brown eyes filled with concern.
For me.
Again.
“Gill, get away.
I can’t hold it back for long.”
Pain-filled brown eyes with black sclera stared at me.
But there was far more worry for me in them.
“Avada Ked…”
The subordinate of the red-haired man began to utter the Unforgivable Curse.
But instead of lunging forward, the grey-haired man fell to the floor, trusting his suddenly flaring instincts.
A whip of golden flame with flickering tongues of red fire cut the wizards in nondescript clothing to pieces.
With a crack, the glass fragments of the corridor windows scattered, letting in a gust of wind, while part of the train’s body and roof were torn open.
The heat of the flames began to intensify.
“Holy shit.”
The man with the cane, surrounded by magical protection from a bracelet artifact, who had by now entered the compartment where his subordinate was binding the unconscious girl and her daughter, quietly swore.
Under the frightened gaze of the subordinate, a lion’s head made of condensed fire, which had broken through the train’s roof, opened its maw, heading straight for them.